Chapter Text
The garden outside their cottage is usually a very relaxing place for Eurydice. Something about the smell of the plants in the sun, watching shoots come up from the dirt and blossom into flowers. Orpheus, during the summer months, usually sits near the window and writes, his faint humming drifting over the beds and trellises. There's the added stress relief of stabbing things with a trowel, if need be.
Especially this summer, they haven't had to worry about it at all. With the seasons righted, everything seems to be flourishing.
Maybe flourishing…a bit too much, actually.
"Good gods…." The kitchen table is covered. They have invaded the countertops, the chairs, and several cupboards. She'd be in awe if she wasn't also a little despairing. Their entire house is full of zucchini. "How did this happen?"
She hadn't even planted that many! A few vines at the far end of the garden! But over the past few weeks, they had produced enough zucchini to fill the entire house, little by little. Not that their house was very big. But still.
"Um." Eurydice turns around to look at her husband with the put-on air of a general about to recieve very bad news. He has the grace to look a little embarassed. "They looked a little like they were wilting, is all. I may have sung to them. Just a bit."
"Orpheus." She wheezes, clutching at the front of his shirt. "Orpheus, oh my god. What the fuck are we going to do with all of these?" There is a hysterical laugh brewing somewhere in her chest about the sheer quantity of vegetable matter currently sitting at their kitchen table. It's ridiculous.
Before she knows it, that laugh is bubbling up out of her, falling into her lover's arms as he, too, begins to snicker at the situation they've found themselves in. The two of them stay there and laugh together, across from their kitchen full of a simply apocalyptic amount of veggies.
Eurydice realizes with a kick that her laughter is coming out a bit too choked. She raises her hands to her face, and they come away startlingly damp. When did that start happening?
Orpheus stops laughing when he notices too, reaching down to cup her face."Are you alright?" Her perfectly earnest poet, always just there when she needs him.
"I…don't know?" She isn't sad, or at least she doesn't think so. She feels a curious sort of lightness behind her breastbone, even as the tears keep coming. She still wants to laugh. "This has just…never happened to me before?"
Ah. That might be it, actually.
"I've never really had this problem!" Even through the tears, she's smiling. It's so silly, how concerned he still looks. She snorts wetly. "I don't think a year ago I could have believed that the most pressing issue in my life is 'too much zucchini'. Or too much of anything."
His fingers ghost over her cheeks, wiping away the wet trails. So graceful, always. "And now it is. Now this is the biggest problem I have. And it's silly." Eurydice presses a kiss to her lover's face, blinking away the last of the tears. "I never thought I'd have that. Thank you. For making my biggest problem something so small."
Orpheus finally smiles again, sunshine breaking through cloud cover. He looks a little teary-eyed himself. "For you, anything."
Eurydice laughs, a little soggy still. "Grow a thousand zucchini in our garden, just for me."
He goes red around the ears again, sheepish. "Lesson learned."
––
1. Roasted Zucchini
Still slightly tender from her earlier crying jag, she has ordered her ever-dutiful poet to stop languishing around the house and to chop up some of this goddamn zucchini for her to try some recipes. It's a hot day out, and Eurydice doesn't really want to use the oven more than she has to, but really, they've got to get rid of this all somehow.
So she grabs their one heavy-duty cast iron pan (where Orpheus found it she'll never know– he'd brought it home one day shortly after they'd moved in together and, when questioned, had only ever shrugged and smiled earnestly at her, which was vaguely concerning) and gets to work. Oil and some basil from the garden (mostly normal, thank the gods) and some mystery spice that smells like oregano from their pantry, and of course the zucchini. All into the pan and into the oven. She tears up some of their stale bread and puts some cheese on top as an afterthought.
The oven is far too hot to stand next to for any length of time, so Eurydice backs off to go lean against the kitchen table. "I guess we have dinner sorted. Are you going to be working at the bar tonight?"
Orpheus looks up from the cutting board. She thinks fondly of a small woodland creature with a flashlight shined on it. "Yes, I said I could bus and probably play. Why?"
"I was thinking that maybe we could take some of them down and pass them on to Hermes or the Lady. She'd probably know what to do with them better than us, I'd assume." And she's a goddess who could make them all go away if she wanted goes unspoken. "Fill up a few…crates, maybe."
"I don't think we'll ever be rid of it." Orpheus says mournfully, cubing more of the dreaded vegtable as he does so. "I could write an ode about zucchini. Certaintly not wanting for inspiration."
"Don't you dare. We've got enough of the stuff already." She smiles down at him, brushing bangs out of his face. It's second nature to lean down and kiss him, too. He's a sweet kisser– very unselfish, though always chasing a little bit after Eurydice draws back, as if he's just hoping she'll swoop back in and continue. She does, most of the time.
Slow as syrup, they part, Orpheus still looking adoringly up at her through his eyelashes. Eurydice simply can't help herself, ducking back and pressing another kiss, long and honey-sweet, to his lips, grinning. His arms come up, settling lightly at her shoulders as she leans into him.
They separate again, Orpheus following her back up to standing. "Please tell me our bed, at least, is free of zucchini."
They eat early on in the evening– working at a bar, no matter how close to home, tends to eat into one's nights. The roasted zucchini is, admittedly, amazing. Simple and filling, as cheese and bread and vegtables often are. Eurydice watches her love laugh at a very stupid joke she's made and thinks to herself how lucky she is to have this.
–
The bar is fairly slow, at least until the Lady shows up. She has the tendency to turn any space she inhabits into one full to the brim with revelry, the heady smell of summertime and absinthe following along behind. Eurydice stands behind the bar with Hermes as a slightly tipsy goddess of summer teaches her how to make cocktails, and watches Orpheus perform out of the corner of her eye.
He's playing some celebratory ballad about love lost, one that has every patron in the bar singing along and stomping to the beat. It's impossible to not look, at least a little bit, at him when he sings. There's some quality in it that makes him more real than anyone else in that bar, more saturated than his surroundings.
Persephone finally seems to have noticed that she's not entirely paying attention to the pearls of bartending wisdom being dropped. "So…everything going well with him, then?"
Eurydice starts slightly from her reviere. "Yes. I mean, mostly. Stupid little squabbles, you know, but never any big problems. Well…right now, maybe, but I actually wanted to ask you–"
Persephone straightens up, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially. "Trouble in paradise?" the grin on her face is positively evil. "I know a trick or two in bed, sister, you're going to want to get some oil–"
"Hey, what're we talking about?" Orpheus swoops down, pressing a kiss to the top of Eurydice's head and lets Persephone ruffle his hair in greeting. He's always very animated after performing, some of that divinity still clinging to him.
"Ah, don't you worry. Girl talk, you know." Persephone shoots a wink Eurydice's way that Eurydice is sure means something very different to the goddess than to the mortal. "I liked the new song, kid."
"Thanks! I thought of the chorus when I was in the bar a while back, it's sort of about a story i overheard from this traveler, but also a little about how nothing feels as bad during summer, but—" Orpheus suddenly cuts himself off from his musical ramblings, turning back to Persephone. "Oh, and we wanted to ask, would you want any of these?" He takes a moment to haul up the crate of zucchini from behind the bar, setting it on the countertop with a jarring thud. "We don't know what to do with them all."
Persephone's eyebrows migrate north. "Well. Certaintly not a problem I've encountered in many marriages. Lucky girl." She directs this last remark at Eurydice, and cackles as Orpheus goes red up to his earlobes. "I'm sure my husband never provided such…quality." This is accompanied by much suggestive wiggling of eyebrows at Eurydice, who giggles. (Giggles! What is she, twelve? There must be something in the cocktails.)
"But never fear, I can take them off your hands. I know the troubles that come with being too well-endowed." Another cackle. You could probably fry an egg on Orpheus' face. He's not a prude, but it is a little funny how easily he gets flustered. "Plenty of people 'round here still looking for a good meal, even in the summertime. Glad you two are having fun."
Persephone hops off her barstool and hefts the crate briefly (before some well-muscled attendant offers to carry it) and winks at Eurydice as she goes out into the crowd of the bar, riling the patrons up a bit. "Let's have another song from the bard! I want to dance tonight!"
Eurydice gives him a peck on the cheek as he turns around to go back to the little stage, still a little pink around the ears.
–
The bar clears out around midnight, Persephone waltzing out with her new crate of vegetables and taking the party with her. She smiles at the pair as she goes, and only winks the once.
Now they walk back, several pounds of vegetable matter lighter, though Eurydice has wheedled her way into being carried, piggyback-style, all the way back to their house. She adjusts the strap of the lyre on her shoulder and presses her face into the back of her lover's neck.
"I feel like a pack mule." Orpheus sighs dramatically, striding forwards. "The love of my life, demanding such cruel things of me, and never once has she offered the same in return."
"I could do it! I'm very strong." She may have had few of the cocktails that Persephone had been mixing. Sue her. "You're just too tall. You'd have to bend in half." She's pressed against his back enough to feel his chest vibrate as he laughs. It's a gorgeous summer night, the stars a splash of light over their heads. Eurydice sighs happily.
"I love you." It's not a sentiment she expresses very much out loud, though she feels it constantly, with a force that initially scared her.
Orpheus seems a little startled by her impromptu declaration, but she can almost hear the smile in his voice when he says "I love you too." and then: "Even when we have so much zucchini it takes over our house and the Lady makes crude jokes about it?"
"Even when you summon a thousand zucchini and the Lady makes crude jokes about it." She giggles again. Damn. "You were so red!"
The pair (though to be fair, it's mostly Orpheus) walk on into the night.