A/N: Kind of an unconventional pairing I know, but c'mon, you should know by now I'm all about those. And the chemistry between these two is just beautiful, opposites attract and all! So anyway, I'll be making this a two-shot, and the second chapter will contain as much smut as my mind can conjure before committing suicide from shame - which is quite a lot so I'll definitely be issuing a 'This-is-now-officially-not-work-safe-so-don't-come-crying-to-me-about-brain-bleach' warnings. Capeche? Great. Nyx out.
Disclaimer: I honestly don't know why I have to make a statement disclaimering (not an actual word, I know) mythology, it's mythology.
Hades: I swear to Tartarus I will revoke your Cerberus-petting privileges if you don't do that medamned disclaimer.
Me: I OWN NOTHING!
Even in his palace, concealed by a labyrinth of horrors and an ubiquitous blanket of darkness, Hades almost instantly felt it. Something was out of place. Not wrong exactly, it - whatever it was - did not feel like a threat, or even an intrusion. But it was definitely an anomaly, there was something not quite right about it. It did not belong in the Underworld among the dead.
Hades stilled for a moment, his head tilted to the side like a greyhound listening for its prey. In the Underworld there was always noise: the agonised screaming of the damned, the rush of the River Styx, the whispering of the Voices in Tartarus. But now he could hear no sound. There was nothing but a thick silence; it enclosed the Land of the Dead in a suffocating fist, shrouding it from sight in an acrid mist. The silence seemed almost akin to a living beast, a natural force of nature, snaking its coils around the Underworld and the palace and squeezing. The onyx columns were toppling in slow motion under the strain and the obsidian floor came to life, twisting and swirling in a ravenous vortex. The ringing silence felling everything around him, everything was - Hades blinked and the spell was broken. He straightened and almost mindlessly gave the room a once-over, blank features revealing nothing of what had occurred.
Hades pulled the shadows towards him and the darkness eagerly swallowed him up, transporting him to the source of the incongruity.
"No god has ventured into the depths of the Underworld for many millennia." The King of the Underworld spoke as soon as the shadows released him; his voice was like a frozen, winter breeze, carrying with it icy shards and snapping fangs, though none seemed to pierce through the lava that was the other god's skin. The other god - for Hades judged he couldn't be anything but a deity - was intrigued to discover no malice in Hades' tone, only a piqued curiosity.
"I apologise in advance for any... oddities you may experience in my presence." The god paused, as if considering Hades, the continued. "Or have already experienced. It is an unpleasant side effect of my being." The divinity spoke as a reply, giving the two gods a perfect opportunity to observe one another.
The god that had apparently been responsible for Hades' previous, albeit momentary, bout of mania was - in a word - ablaze. He was just a sight taller than average height, evidently a boy on the cusp of adulthood. His tousled blond hair fell in lustrous waves around his shoulders like a halo of marigold light, framing a handsome face with a strong jawline, carmine lips in the shape of a perfect cupid's bow and model features. His unblemished skin shifted between the colour of rich honey and light caramel, its only omnipresent quality being the fire and subsequent heat that radiated from any exposed bits of flesh. The Adonis-like figure wore a white, tightly fitting chiton which was tied loosely around the god's curved hips with a belt made entirely from solid gold; and though simple, the toga looked ravishing on him, hugging every well-toned muscle and highlighting all the right places, so that the god could have easily been mistaken for a male version of Aphrodite. But perhaps his most stunning feature were his mismatched eyes: one was entirely the colour of molten liquid gold and the other was a complete and fiery ruby red; any pupil had long been lost into the mini tornado that seemed to reside within the god's orbs. Pure radiance emitted from every atom of the deity's body, cloaking him in a wildfire and the rays of the sun, and his aura reflected pure heat and authority. Hades realised that neither of the words 'beautiful' or 'stunning' could quite encompass the god standing before him.
Hades, - for who else could it be? No one but him resided in the Underworld - the fiery deity noted with interest, was the opposite of everything he had seen in the mirror ever day. He was a hair breadth's shorter than Apollo but significantly taller than almost every other god he had met, and despite being one of the oldest deities - surpassing both Zeus and Poseidon in age - he had a youthful complexion, adult but only just. Though there was an intelligence and knowing about him not befitting of an adolescent, like a crack in his armour. The god marvelled at the fallacious nature of the rumours surrounding Hades, he had been warned and frightened with tales of a hideous and demonic beast lurking in the core of the Earth, but the divinity that stood before him was - ironically, perhaps - nothing short of angelic. His skin, though pallid like the first snowfall of winter, was neither sickly nor marred, and it appeared both delicate and metallic; resembling the fragility of a snowflake and the unyielding nature of an icy glacier. He was not heavily muscled like the robust gods and boastful warriors of Olympus, but lithe and slim, striking in a distinctive way, the kind of tireless beautiful that the Olympians - for all their lustre and wonder - lacked. His dishevelled, sable hair was cut short above the shoulders and framed his face in messy yet endearing ripples of rich ebony so dark it appeared to gleam blue in some places. Hades' countenance could have been carved from ivory or marble; his face was perfectly smoothed and curved, every bit and line of it - from his high cheekbones to his angular jawline to his pointed nose - clear-cut and razor-edged. And his eyes were twin obsidian pools of darkness that gleamed with a ferocious intensity that made the Lord of Death look very much alive. The lighter deity could sense and observe the ethereal beauty surrounding Hades; he was like a blizzard, an enthralling but deadly force of nature, something not to be tampered with but admired from a distance.
"What is your name?" Hades spoke at last, after both the divinities had drunk each other in, neither bothering to mask their fascination.
"Apollo." Apollo replied, this time not skirting around the question. His incongruous eyes fixed onto Hades, awaiting his reaction with mild amusement.
Hades gave a bare nod, not even blinking in surprise, "You are the sun god, I have heard of you. The dead speak of the gods often." He did not utter the words with fear or awe as Apollo was used to hearing, but with politely cloaked interest. As if Apollo was an old friend he was discussing the weather with. Apollo felt a spike of pleasure at that.
"The Olympians speak of you frequently as well." Apollo said, not meaning it as a reassurance or a barb. It was a simple observation only.
"Oh?" Hades replied, as if he had known this all along, and perhaps he had; faint humour leaked into his voice. "And what do they say?"
'Nothing worth repeating,' Apollo thought bitterly, surprising himself slightly, he chose to answer with, "They fear you."
Hades' onyx eyes penetrated through his own, but Apollo felt no alarm, "And yet you do not..." Hades whispered, his tone questioning rather than accusing.
Apollo smiled and the surrounding area lightened palpably, most would have been blinded or burned by the intensity, that was something that Apollo knew from experience, but Hades did not appear even mildly inconvenienced, "I do not think I would be here if I did."
Hades regarded the sun god for a while, his expression unreadable, "And why are you here?" He asked eventually.
Apollo let a ball of light form in his hands, watching disinterestedly as it flickered and wove through his fingers, "When I was born," he began. "The sun blessed me with a curse. I am to be skilled in all manner of arts and practices under the sun, which I command. I am to be the epitome of light and life. But..." Apollo's hand twisted into a fist, crushing the ball of light. "But I cannot touch another, for none can withstand the intensity of my light, the heat is too great for any of them to bear. And after my sister, who commands the moon..." Apollo's voice broke slightly and Hades waited patiently for him to continue. "After even she could not come near me for fear of being burnt, I sought out the most barren place I could escape to. I don't want to hurt anyone anymore." The last bit was spoken more quietly than the rest and with a mournful edge.
Hades offered his comfort by recounting his own story, "When Zeus," the name was spoken bitterly, and it held a millennium of hurt and fury. "Forced the care of the Underworld upon me I was instantly exiled from life and the world above. Banished here," at this Hades indicated the ashen land around them, as if hoping to encompass the horror of the Land of the Damned through one gesture. "I had no choice but to become like the darkness and shadows around me, now I have power over death itself and everything that resides beneath the Earth. But," Hades enunciated the word sharply, "I have been touched by the frozen hand of death, so I can no longer touch another without them being frozen by my hand."
In the silence that followed both gods regarded each other as if for the first time. Apollo's spears of sunlight and Hades' tentacles of darkness coiled around each other like vipers, twisting along the floor in a bizarre routine, accentuating the stark contrast between the two deities so that from afar it appeared like a clash of worlds. One was fire and the other was ice, one was light and the other was dark, one nurtured life while the other ended it. And yet...
"I wonder..." Hades breathed, not willing to let the seed of hope flowering inside him bloom just yet. Slowly, hesitantly, he raised his right hand and held it in mid air, as if up against glass, where their powers intertwined. Apollo hesitated, but intrigue and yearning offset his rationality; he extended his left hand, pausing it a millimetre away from Hades'.
Both gods paused with bated breaths, then moved their hands forward in sync.
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