I.
It is dark for a long time, warm and thick and safe. The gentle thud of a drum in the darkness, its echoes spreading through every inch of that infinite, black space. Soothing vibrations sending warmth through the dark, like a bat in the night, fissions of dark brilliance shooting through the blackness.
And then squeeze. Walls closing in, tight, cloying and suffocating. Air disappearing as the pressure mounts, body compressing in a silent scream, too hot, too close, too much.
Suddenly, everything changes. An explosion of taste, touch, sound, sight and smell. Searing light and sounds and touches rake across delicate senses. Large hands close around him tightly and turn him over, wipes the mucus from his pale, pink scrawling body. Smooth plastic, that burns across his new skin, the frigid surface of something cold and harsh and his screams, shrill and sobbing and –
Warm hands have him, wrap him in a cosy blue blanket, large and soft, little calluses in the whirlpool of long fingers.
His eyes flicker open.
A blonde haired man stares back at him in the dim light, jaw slack, azure blue eyes widen in awe. His nose is a little crooked and there is a vague black tattoo on his neck.
"Hullo, love," The man says thickly in an English accent, eyes bright, lips tilted up softly. "We've waited for you a long time."
He stares up at the man feeling oddly content and safe, nestled in the crook of his arms.
The man looks up, looking to someone outside his peripheral. "He's beautiful, isn't he?"
"Perfect." The second voice is deeper, a curl of Spanish through the syllables, and a third, darker, warm hand rests on his forehead. There is a gold band on this man's fingers that presses warm against his forehead, gently. "You're both perfect."
The second man steps into view, taller, broader, with slim glasses, and embraces the first, the hand on his head sliding off to entwine into the blonde strands of the first and they rest their foreheads against each other, to look at him.
He stares back at them, quiet and still.
The second man is darker, a tight curl to the bitter chocolate of his hair, brown almost black eyes warmly taking him in. He knows this one, knows the dark fire in his eyes, a strange familiar undercurrent in his unfamiliar but soft, fond smile.
"Say hello to Papa," The first says, a tear breaking down his cheeks, smile threatening to reach his ears.
Papa looks fit to cry too, his warm dark hands breaking away from their place at the blonde man's neck. Fingers trace down his face, slowly and spidery, gentle and soft with reverence; down his forhead, to the tip of his nose, traces his lips down to his chin and chest and rests there, a little to the left.
"I can feel his heart." Papa whispers. It's a different face, a different voice but as sure as the tiny heart beats beneath his own chest - Hades, his own soul whispers back.
The blonde man kisses his Papa's cheek and rests the tip of his own ringed finger next to the other's on his chest. "Papa and Dada, how strange," The blond man -Dada - chuckles.
Papa, Hades soul, stoops low to press a soft kiss against his small forehead, finger still resting above his little heart. "He's our new beginning, a fresh start," He murmurs, blue eyes bright.
"Our little Phoenix."
A/N: so not gonna lie, this was more of an experiment for me to see if writing shorter and connected drabbles makes it easier for me to actually finish a story. I'm always keen to write the fluff and the angst, especially the angst, but when it comes to the mundane moments between plot twists I'm always quick to bore. So here's a wee trial to fix that! This fic will be a series of drabbles that I'll hopefully update whenever I can as a bit of a writing exercise, but I hope you enjoy! Character's maybe a little OC but then again it wouldn't be an AU if it was strictly by the books! :)
