~*~*~*~*~*~
The
Dragon of Underworld
Disclaimer:
Hercules: TLJ belongs to Renaissance Studios, not me. I just
use the guys for fun.
And porn.
Warnings: hard-to-recognize smut, regrettably nothing graphic
Pairings: Hades/young Ares
A/N: This has written itself. I have nothing to do with it… it's just my little Muse playing around without my consent again.
"What do you want?" Hades whispers, Hades with his deliciously dull colors, melting into the gray shadows behind Ares' back as if he was a part of them.
He is, and he belongs here, in the Underworld, and Ares feels he doesn't. It's what arouses him and frustrates him about this place, how it manages to be so dimmed, dark all over and yet makes him stand out in his own blackness, so sharp with its precise leather contours against the smudged edges of everything down here.
Ares takes a shaky breath, not knowing what to say. He's too young to know, and what his father wants him to do is not what he feels he would like to want. It's complicated, and Ares doesn't really want to do anything just yet with his life. He's got eternity, after all, but he feels that it is pressing him more urgently than mortality does to ordinary humans.
"I don't know," he admits quietly, and the eternal dusk around him shifts a little as Hades comes closer. Hades, who is like a shadow himself, so different from anything Ares has seen in his short life. Everything in the world up there has a definite form, but with Hades, even the color of his eyes seems to be flickering like a ghost of a candle flame. That constant alternation of existence is what captivates Ares like nothing before. It's pure fascination, eagerness to learn more about this man who is his uncle and feels more distant than the thousands of humans Ares is to rule one day.
Yet, he's still closer than his Father, and Ares knows that if he reaches, he can touch Hades and confirm that indeed, he is here, right behind his back, staring holes into his head for whatever reason. It's slightly uncomfortable, being confronted with such scrutiny, and Ares is reluctant to let anyone into his mind. It has never done him any good to do that, so he shuts Hades out before the older God can reach his feelings, lets him brush over insignificant little thoughts that had crossed his mind and doesn't bother about what Hades can find there.
After all, those things are pretty obvious.
Ares can hear Hades smile lightly - a shadow of a smile on shadowy lips, almost nonexistent and caressing him all over as if the little movement of Hades' lips travelled through space to meet Ares' skin. It feels weird, but not unpleasant. Never before had he felt so overpowered, not even in presence of his father. The Underworld is so completely Hades' as the world above could never be Zeus', and Ares feels it with every fiber of his being.
"You don't want to do what HE wants you to," Hades states, not a hint of a question in his voice, and Ares doesn't bother with a reaction. Anyone who bothers to look can see that he's not a good son, not by any standards. After all, he's War, and War yields to no one. Not even when it breaks him silently, invisibly, to be always the rebel, the bad one, despite him trying so hard.
He can't change the direction of his fate. After all.
A hand touches his shoulder, and Ares cannot decide whether the touch is light or hard, cold or warm. It's just there, as if at the back of his mind, and Ares tries not to shiver as he stares off to distance where Elysian Fields start, with their shimmering brightness to which Ares can't seem to belong, no matter how he tries. The contrast, the sharpness of the colors there make him sick, and the laughter of people makes him want to shut all the sounds out.
He doesn't know why he is that way. He always was, a little dark child who never laughed properly, happily. Not that anyone bothered to try and make him. Running the world is a time-consuming business.
Ares turns away from the bright blues and sharp greens that burn themselves onto his pupils like little flames. The shadowy hand slides down his arm at that movement, and Hades just looks at him, but it seems like he's saying everything just by that, offering more than Ares would have dared to ask.
The dusk around is never still, shifting and whirling like a living being, a huge dragon not quite visible, hovering over them in an enormous cave that is the Underworld. Ares breathes deeply, imagining that tiny particles of that dragon invade his lungs, making him stronger and stronger. Making him a dragon who won't fear anything. Won't stray, won't flinch, won't blink.
He looks up into the metamorphosis that is Hades' eyes, shaded in marble grey and Ares would've never believed that a color as plain as grey can have so many different shades. They seem to be reflected in Hades' whole being as he smiled softly, almost nonexistently, again and lets Ares know that he knows, despite not being told.
The shadowy hand is back again, as real as ever, stroking his cheek ghosted with a promise of dark stubble, and Ares leans into that warm touch that was never granted to him before. He knows what this little dance is supposed to mean and doesn't mind, even though he's not all that sure that he can give up his composure to anyone. It helps that Hades is distant, half-not-there all the time, that he doesn't feel threatening to Ares, doesn't concentrate his entire mind on his nephew.
When Hades' neither warm nor cold lips brush over Ares', he is still not sure. All that is in his mind is the image of his father saying he'll take him down to the Underworld for some 'training'. Then, Zeus vanishes to Elysian Fields to hunt down some of his already deceased whores, and practically orders Ares to do the same. Ares delights in not having obeyed that command. He's rebellious, provoking by nature, and Hades stirs something in him that was sleeping up until now, maybe another monster that rears its ugly head now and eats away at Ares' resistance and honesty.
When there's nothing left, Ares moans and thrusts his tongue into Hades' mouth. The God of Underworld doesn't resist at all, just shifts under Ares' touch the way no material being could ever achieve. Ares' hands wrap around Hades' body, hard and solid against the shadowy presence, as if to make sure that the God of Underworld was really there, not going anywhere just for this little moment of utter torture that makes Ares lose so much he doesn't know what he's losing anymore. Fingers like elongated shadows come to tangle in his hair and Ares is sure he'll never quite manage to get rid of that semi-presence over his skin. He kisses the mouth, burning and wet and yet freezing him and drying his throat. It's like kissing something that doesn't exist while existing twice as much as anything else, and that's precisely what Hades is, half-away and twice as present when his hand squeezes Ares' leather-clad ass and Ares shifts closer, melting his sharp black into the soft grey.
For a little while, Ares feels trapped as if the dusk is drawing him into itself, and Hades, feeling his tension, draws back slightly, as breathless as Ares, as if reflecting the young God's feelings.
"Do you trust me?" he asks, and Ares tries to think, but fails to do so - the dragon in him has already taken over his actions and he pulls Hades in for another kiss, breathing "no" over his lips, stirring the shadows further. Hades doesn't seem to mind, seems to understand and Ares feels the shadows stirring inside of himself too, as if Hades has already managed to melt a bit of his cloudy self into Ares' soul.
His moan echoes through the clairobscure, mingling with the pained shrieks from Tartarus, when Hades' teeth sink into his throat and the strong hand he can't see but only feel descends over his butt, squeezing lightly. Then there's a flash of not-exactly-light, and the blood-colored mist under Ares' closed eyelids burns brighter. For a second, he worries that Hades has acted upon some misguidedly romantic impulse and moved them to Elysian Fields, but then he manages to crack one eye open - not that easy, because teeth on his neck are still present - and sees that it's a room, decidedly not Elysian as the shadows lurk in the corners, chased from the center by dozens of candles.
Ares' lips quirk ironically over the unneeded light source and then release a groan. Hades' mouth slide over his skin like something made of mist, wet and warm and almost completely solid, and Ares can barely breathe - which doesn't really matter as he doesn't really need to, so he gives in and pushes his fingers into Hades' hair just to make sure the older god is really there.
That's the part of the deal that excites Ares the most, probably - that Hades has existed for longer than himself, not something a god can say about many of his partners. He's older, and wiser, and greater, knows more about godhood and schemes and pissing off the guy in charge, which is exactly what Ares is doing, though half-unconsciously, what sends blood down to his cock quicker than anything Hades can do. The thought of his father, the mighty Zeus, finding the two of them.
Ares knows that Hades can see into his mind like he's another foolishly dead mortal, and doesn't fight it. Partially out of pure rebellion, partially because Hades is pushing his vest off his shoulders and embraces him the way Ares never has been embraced before. It feels as if Hades is wrapped around him whole, pliant and giving way to every Ares' movement, pressing skin on skin just for that feeling of someone being there, protective and bigger than him. When Ares notices Hades' erection against his thigh, it almost feels unnatural, it's so real, hard and earthy that Ares has a hard time believing it is a part of the same God that feels distant even as he licks his chest. The wet trails left by Hades' tongue feel like flames of Tartarus and Ares arches to get more. It seems that Hades lives just to obey unspoken desires of his nephew, because he gives just what Ares would demand, if only he knew what it was he wanted. A nipple squeezed between sharp teeth, another flash, and two naked gods are pushing against each other. Ares tries to look, but it's as if he's being pushed down on - another flash - a bed by the shadows themselves.
Ares has been told by some of his mortal lovers - there haven't been that many yet - that he's beautiful, and he knows he is. No God can be repulsive if they don't really wish for it, and in Ares' dirty little rebelling soul hides that tiny part of a people-pleaser, the part that longs to be worshipped, adored, respected. He knows his skin is pure bronze, his hair raven's feathers, his every muscle so perfect that no sculptor in Greece could ever get marble to even resemble that perfection. He knows, and yet he is amazed by the way Hades oozes power as he arches over him, monumental like one of the Titans, filling the whole room and yet not that much bigger than Ares when he looks at it rationally. Even naked, Hades melts into the dim light of the room, into the color of air in Ares' mouth as he kisses him. He is neither bronze nor gold, none of the aggressively shiny metals that mortals use for decoration or manslaughter, and Ares believes that there is no metal or stone quite like Hades' skin, none that could melt into background and yet shine in that colorless, tame glow.
When Hades' gleaming shadow melts into Ares even more, in a hard, earthy way only someone as close to death as Hades can manage, Ares gasps. Not for the need of air, but because there's more of Hades floating around, as if he were really one with the lurking greys in the corner of Ares' vision. There are no limitations of a mortal body, no pain, no tension, no nothing, except the pleasure. How selfish of Gods, Ares thinks, to maintain the pleasure and dismiss the pain as something only mortals should feel, and one insignificant 'why' flashes through his mind, then the questions are all gone, though much later, Ares will remember it with his body and earn scornful sneers from his whole family for accepting the pain of battle like a mortal. Not from Hades, though - Hades understands, Ares knows that as he feels the older god's hips dig into his buttocks when Hades thrusts into him. He could remain his spectral sleek self, but he sees into Ares, and knows that the young War God needs to feel at least something solid to lean his mind on. So he gives him a hard cock, hard bones and hard muscles, as if there wasn't enough hardness in his existence - not life, because life is something that ends in death, and Ares is never going to die - and Ares holds on to that hardness that feels like it's sliding from under his fingers even as he grips, scrapes and cling. He arches, he yells, never caring if anyone hears.
And when someone - the only someone that mattered in this little rebellion - does, Ares regards his father with the same contempt and longing as always. The last thing he sees are Hades' eyes, full of light and more present than ever, the eyes of a dragon from the shadows. Zeus doesn't even seem to see his brother when he yanks his son out of his bed - although Zeus IS the King of gods, Ares somehow feels that Hades slips from under his reign as he slips from every reality the world ever tried to bind him with.
Unable to be bound, unable to be free, fascinatingly frustrating to Ares. Now he knows, liquidity of Hades' existence dripping from between his legs as he stands in his father's temple, listening to a paradoxical, ironic lecture about morals, where to seek refuge if he ever needed it.
In upcoming millennia, Ares never does.
But everytime he sees a soldier die on battlefield, everytime he takes a deep whiff of the war-scented air full of blood and unnamed metals, he feels the dragon particles in him squirm.