Sooooo...it's been more than a couple of days.

Whoops.

Korean Drama keeps GETTING IN THE WAY.

Meanwhile.

[luke, i am your disclaimer!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!]

::Poseidon and Sally discuss life, love, and Aquaman::

He's braiding starlight into her hair like so many dazzling barettes, the twinkling effulgence offsetting the opalescent pearl of her eyes. By now, he's willing to grant that she's the most splendid creature he's seen in more than a millennia, which is saying a great deal more than he thinks he ever actually will.

"I'm a god, you know." He informs her candidly, fingers curving the creamy-smooth arch of her throat, ghosting the camber of her graceful spine. She's a masterpiece, he muses, this little human made of clay.

For a full moment, she says nothing at all, and he begins entertaining the possibility that she hasn't heard him, that she's fallen to the lulling rhythm of the surf and missed his quiet revelation altogether. He scowls absently into the foam, and the waves roll back in mute terror, seeming to shrink as for miles and miles the sea abruptly quiets.

No sooner are they blanketed in the heavy, incongruous silence that Sally's musical laughter shatters it, ringing sonorously into the night sky. Poseidon spares a somewhat nervous glimpse up into the heavens, praying to…well, himself, that Zeus is off having an indiscretion of his own at the moment. Or, failing that, that Hera's In The Mood.

"That does explain a few things." She says, at length, and he stares dumbly at the wistful smile quirking her lips. This modern ilk of human, in his experience, is not prone to so readily believing such a disclosure, and he discovers himself taken aback at her easy acceptance of what should be a fairly fantastical claim.

Uncertainly,

"You're not…surprised? You aren't going to freak out or call me crazy or demand proof?"

"Well, no offense or anything, Fish Breath, but you didn't exactly, um…hide it very well. Maybe breathing underwater is no big whoop for you, but I don't often date men who can ride sharks or subdue enormous sea monsters or routinely lug around enormous green pitchforks." Poseidon startles, sure he'd been consistently, purposefully overlaying the image of his trident with a rotating reel of more commonplace objects, such as surf boards, a backpack, a fishing rod, the occasional iced latte. Seeing through the Mist was one thing, but effortlessly penetrating a deliberate veneer? Sally Jackson has just crossed over into Unfamiliar Territory. This is not a variety of mortal he's ever known.

For the moment, however,

"It's a trident, Sals." She purses her lips cutely at him over her shoulder and flaps her hand through the air, a playful dismissal.

"Pah. Pitchfork, trident. Po-tay-toe, puh-taw-toe." He chuckles, a basso rumble that vibrates through her where his knees are pressed against her thighs. "Anyway, I figured you had to either be Aquaman or something much, much higher up on the food chain. Like, not human." She lapses into a brief silence, considering. "Aquaman is human, isn't he? Plus, part fish or something...?" He smiles absently.

"'Or something.'" Poseidon strings a row of ocean pearls into her dark hair. "I believe he was half-'Atlantean.' What that does or does not tell you about his humanity, I've no idea, but there you go."

"Well, whatever he is, I suspected you were something…more." She pauses, a rueful frown fitting itself into the contours of her face. "And then there was…that incident with that very beautiful, very unhappy woman at the palace…Amphitrite, if I recall?" He sits in stony silence, disentangling his fingers from her long hair to drop into his lap. "I have to figure the reason she wasn't pleased to meet me is because I was with you, and if what I've read is true, then Amphitrite would have little grounds for resenting me unless you were…um…I mean, I wasn't certain or anything, but…you are Poseidon, right? Or Neptune, or whatever you're calling yourself these days."

The waves outside roll contemplatively over the sand, and the temperature of the air drops slightly, noticeably.

"Yes." And then, face neutral, "You know of my wife."

"…yes." For a long moment, he is perfectly still, perfectly silent. "Reading's kinda my bread and butter, Fish Breath. Gotta know a thing or two about stories if I'm eventually gonna write my own."

"They are not stories." He insists, leveling a glare with no heat at her.

"They are stories –some of my favorite stories. Timeless, classic stories of love and heroism and betrayal and adventure." Poseidon hears breathless exuberance in her voice, the jumping exhilaration of intellectual wonder. She shuffles around between his knees, twisting until she's at an appropriate angle to dust a kiss across his temple, and as he leans into her embrace, he catches a flash of her remarkable eyes, whorling from a milky sapphire to an inky gray. He closes his own eyes, committing the image to Indelible Memory Storage, and focuses on the sound of her breath, soft and even. "But I know that just because they're stories doesn't mean they aren't true. And the past few weeks have given me enough context clues to realize your stories definitely are true." Sally sweeps cool hands across his hips, twining her fingers at his back. "And believe me, I was plenty freaked out at first. I was ready to deal with a glowing, aquatic superhero. An ancient Greek god was a horse of a different color. But you seemed nice enough for an invincible divinity, if a little pervy, so I decided I'd just get over myself and comes to terms with the whole 'this is totally impossible' part of the equation and give dating an immortal a go."

"Simple as that?" He wonders, amused.

"The sex made it easier to swallow." Sally grins, something decidedly, darkly impious about the tilt of her lips, sharply contrasting the halo of starlight at her crown.

She leans in to kiss him, mouth warm against his throat, and it is the end of the conversation for some time.

*'little human made of clay' -- often the original tribes of Greece were spoken of in literature as having been crafted from earth, or clay

One chapter left!

Thanks so-so-so much for all your wonderful reviews, kidlets. They make me swoon with de-light. Yes-huh.

Next Chapter: poseidon is naked pretty much the whole time. sally appreciates the view.