Work Text:
There is a boy; you love him. He comes into your house and steals your (cattle)(dreams), (sacrifices them to himself)(eats them for himself) and you still, somehow, love him because he smiles like (the sun's sharpest light)(the Lethe's laziest tricks). There is a boy that myth will remember as a babe and you will forever write into every story with meaning, and those who know how to look will find (his orange pulse in the beat of every song)(his blue heart the origin of every dream).
There is no one you trust more, though you are often told you should not trust him at all.
(He flies.)(He dives.)
He is a thief.
You love him, and he is not—
***
"Ow," Hermes says, mouth all fuzz and muscles sore. There is sweat drenching his brow, maybe sweat, but maybe it's not sweat. He opens his eyes and the entire world is the sort of bright the Underworld never is, the kind of bright that is more a lot like back home and a house he very much never much visits because it gets Mama all sorts of irritated, that long running rivalry with a god who sure gets close to beauty and he doesn't see, really, why they keep pretending they hate each other when really--
There are feet, very white, silhouetted by sun and he is waking up on tile and it is so hot.
Maybe he's having a bad dream.
"Hermes," and that's a statement that wants, desperately, to be a question if Hermes has ever heard one.
"That's me," he says, sitting up, all of him the ache of running, running... running into—
***
"Ow," Hermes says, after he's choked up what must have been the entire sea of possibility he, possibly, shouldn't have tried cutting through. Chaos is not a place for time.
He's drenched, soaked through and freezing. In the dark, Underworld kind of dark, one of a kind sort of dark. Odd place for him to be waking up.
There are feet, glowing blue and mist, not touching the floor.
"Hermes?"
Hermes knows when a question’s a trap, a pit, and he's about to fall right in.
“I can explain,” Hermes says.
***
“Not that I don’t love to see you,” Hermes says, fast--not that he’s ever fast, not really, just sort of sometimes hurries along a little, but he’s giving it a go, a little hurry because it is hot and too bright and he feels increasingly more nauseous with every passing second under a gaze this searing. “Not that I don’t, but I really ought to be getting back to Hypnos. I’ve got dreams for him, busy night out for me, so if you don’t mind—”
Apollo is frowning and his eyes are so much fire.
“There a stream around here?” Hermes asks, shifting on feet that are burning, aching.
He wants to run.
“No,” Apollo says. “A river.”
“Even better,” Hermes says, and makes for the courtyard across tile that burns dreaming off. A step, two, three.
Fall.
***
“...so you took a shortcut that wasn’t yours to take,” Hypnos says, both his wings folded neat. Odd detail, that, but then his skin is moonlit blue and he glows where he floats. Dressed looser, too, for that matter.
Plenty of odd details, just like the stars all possibility still wet on Hermes’ tongue.
“You could say that,” Hermes says.
The air is wet. He’s still freezing and his scarf, for all the sun it is, is not actually warm. Feels bit like he’s breathing soup.
"Can you swim?" Hypnos asks.
"No," Hermes says. "Can fly, though."
***
There is a boy. You love him: his wings all light, his pulse, his laughter. He is so young, pretends he is much older, and when he was still awkward in his skin he stole your cattle with a sunshine smile, lied he hadn’t, and gave you a lyre that lays by your bed.
He is always getting himself into trouble; he is always getting himself back out of it again.
There is a boy. His soles are seared to soul and he is more dream than certainty. His heart beats blue and he wants, desperately, to dive. He is so young and very, very afraid. This is a certain place to be, and he an uncertain thing.
His eyes are black. Some things stay the same.
“Not sure... feet, it’s hot, is it usually this hot here, just give me a second, be up and out and--where’s the river?” he babbles, trying so desperately to run back to the sea.
It has been a very long time since you visited the Underworld.
“Sh,” you soothe, scoop him up in damp linens, and listen to words that flow, not patter.
***
There is a boy. You love him: his feet all light, his pulse, his laughter. He is so young, uses it every chance he gets. He stole a dream from you once, ate it right beneath your nose, and then brought you everything under the sun with a moonlight smile to make up for it.
He is a stream; every river has one, and he is yours.
There is a boy. His wings are sunlight and his smile is sharp as a knife. His pulse pounds a drum that keeps marching to a time that you do not know--certainly not your time. He is so certain; it makes your eyes sting looking at him. The air is so hot near him.
“Do you know me, where you’re from?” you ask.
You are very, very vast. It’s been a while since you reached out to yourself.
“Yes,” he says, looking up at you. “Not--not well, but, yes, know everybody.”
His eyes are black. They’re his.
“Okay,” you say. “Let’s start there.”
***
The House of Hades is a very quiet place, a very easy place to sleep, to dream. Easy when there’s not the press of so much parchment work, but maybe then too. Especially then. It’s a very quiet place, except sometimes Zagreus comes out of the pool. Sometimes fish end up in the pool, too. It’s nice to feed them.
You are dozing. You doze often; sleep needs tending, too. You are dozing and in your doze there is the House, which you are wandering like one of the shades. No one really notices you smooth out a rough bit of sleep, or tweak a dream brighter.
No one really notices you.
You are dozing; your feet take you down beneath the House. There’s a very large wall down here; it exists outside of dreaming too. You come here often, feel like you should. You think... it doesn’t matter. You trace your fingers over a wall that has existed since before you were born but you’ve heard, once, from a sister--you have many, many sisters--that it did not used to be there. That...
There’s a call. You look up.
There is a very beautiful bird sitting atop a wall you’ve never managed to reach the top of no matter how high you float. A blue that only exists in dreaming. It calls again, an odd sound like nothing else you know, then leaps from the wall, dives for you; you duck, only for it to dive into you, and—
You wake, chest caved in, face wet as your river you barely see anymore.
***
It’s cooler in the Underworld.
Still hot.
They’re on a boat, him and Apollo; Hermes can hear Charon’s coins clinking together, hear the splash of his oar. He wants to pull himself up; he wants to fall off the boat and into the river, run.
There’s a hand over his eyes, a lyre-worn thumb soothing against his forehead. Wet linen, damp seeping into his clothes, welcome cool against his skin.
“Save your strength,” Apollo says and Hermes asks, “For what,” and Apollo says, “You will see,” like that means anything.
But he can hear Charon. But it’s dark. But there’s a mist he knows the taste of brushing his lips and he can picture how it coils and spins over the edge of the boat, fills the belly, and his fingers twitch, trying to grasp dream.
“Save your strength,” Apollo repeats, irritated.
“You love me,” Hermes says, certain.
“One of you,” Apollo agrees.
***
Delphi is warmer. Definitely warmer. Hermes is absolutely not freezing anymore, not a bit.
Still keeps his scarf around his shoulders.
It is Delphi; he knows the sounds, the light. The view that goes forever--except he thinks it might here. He thinks there hasn’t been a season turned here in... he doesn’t know. Forever, maybe. He thinks if he steps wrong, he’s going to fall between the cracks of reality and drown in a sea all stars he choked up not too long ago.
But there are cattle, hides gleaming gold. But there is a climb fit only for goats and gods that float. A spring and a home that only the stupidest of mortals try to reach.
“Didn't know you could leave the Underworld,” Hermes says, not an excuse to pause.
Leans against a rock a breath. Several.
“I don't really, but you need a place to fly,” Hypnos says, matter of fact. More certain than Hermes has ever heard Hypnos be. If this were a different Delphi, he’d vanish under all this sun. Hermes is certain of it.
It’s not. Hypnos floats, wrapped in a poppy red shroud, mist coiling around his joints. When the light strikes right, it falls through him, shimmers like the river in the valley far below.
“You’re the one who loves me here,” Hermes says, sudden, certain.
“Even when you take shortcuts that aren't for you,” Hypnos agrees. "Do you need me to carry you?"
"No," Hermes says, pushes himself back to his feet.
It's a very hard climb. Never noticed that before.
***
He's waiting, when you get to where the Lethe spills a waterfall down and down and down to pool in a lake in Tartarus, a place for punishments you never would have doled out but weren't yours to make because a lake isn't the Lethe, even if the lake is your water. You don’t hate anything but you maybe, maybe hate that lake. It’s never felt right.
Apollo is waiting, and so is he.
There's a bird caught in your chest and it won't stop singing. It wants to go home. It loves you. It is a blue that only exists in dreams, except there's Apollo sitting shrouded humble on the banks of your river with a bird in his arms that color of dreaming.
No one really thinks of you.
"Hypnos?" the bird asks, stirring. He smiles at you, for you, skin crinkling at the corners of black, black eyes.
The bird stuck in your chest won't shut up. No one has ever looked at you the way he is looking at you.
Your face is still damp.
“That’s me,” you say, trying to make your voice steady.
He smiles wider, brighter. He smiles like you mean the whole world. He smiles like—
There is a bird in your chest and it won’t stop singing and it is not yours. You’re looking for him. Another you. Not you. Not—
“You would not believe the night I’ve had,” Hermes says, struggling to sit upright, and you sit down next to him, next to them, but Apollo is... he’s merciful, sometimes, and he is not looking at you.
People always forget that about him, that he’s merciful sometimes. They remember Marsyas and far striker and plague. They forget paeans, healing, joy.
“Tell me about it,” you ask.
There’s a bird all blue in your chest and it won’t stop singing. It matches the tune of the one in front of you, sunburnt and half sublime. He smiles at you and he tells you about dreams and seas and how he ran into something in Chaos, knocked him right out, woke up at Apollo’s, can you believe, but it’s all right now, glad you’re here to help him the rest of the way home, and he already feels better for it and you are trying, so hard, not to weep.
No one thinks of you. You sit in a House that is quiet and lonely except for fish that sometimes slip into a pool you’re not meant to feed, except for Dusa asking you to do the work a way that is more efficient and less kind, except for a few token words when Zagreus gets home. You doze sometimes. Mom didn’t even talk to you, expected it to take a whole age for you to finally relent and it didn’t even take that but still, still, you’re just--you, you’re trying, it’s a lot of work, isn’t it? But no one thinks so, except maybe Than, but he’s never home.
No one thinks of you and yet here is-is—
“Hermes,” you say so careful; the bird caught in your chest preens full and the god in front of you with his black eyes and his words that run like so much water to your heart goes quiet a moment, smiling like he’s not already halfway to dying.
“Listen to me go on,” Hermes says, laughs like-like-like the Lethe when she’s feeling playful. “Didn’t even ask how it’s been here!”
You feel Apollo’s gaze on you.
You look back. At a god dressed humble, hair pulled back from his face, shrouded so he does not blind down here in the dark. At lips pressed, tugged down at the corners.
“Quiet,” you say. “It’s been quiet.”
“Please,” Apollo says.
He could survive down here. The bird whose slipped Apollo’s lap to rest against you like there is nowhere else he belongs, whose words flow like dreaming, who keeps singing you stories even in this tiny, tiny span of time, keeps making your heart sing. It’s dark here, it’s damp, you know where it’s dampest, you know where he could stay, you could--could--like all those statues, you could keep him.
Apollo knows you could.
“Need me to fix that?” Hermes asks, laughing. He doesn’t know you aren’t--he doesn’t know that you’re not... He doesn’t know. Apollo didn’t tell him.
You could keep him.
It’s so quiet here. The House. No one notices you.
Not really.
“Say,” Hermes says, “where’s your other wing?”
Apollo knows you could.
He knows you won’t.
“Hermes,” you say softly; he looks at you, smile turned a secret only for you. A different you. A you who sent a bird, trying to find him.
You could never tell him. He’d be happy, maybe.
You know what cages do.
“Hermes,” you say gently, “you’re not home.”
***
There’s this lake.
Hermes sits at the banks of the Lethe, right by the waterfall where it spills down. It’s cooler here. He’s sitting, feet glowing against the soft grass of Elysium, and he’s thinking and being quiet, things he’s pretty sure no one ever expects him to do, but it’s been...
It’s been a day.
“Charon could take you,” Hypnos says. A Hypnos, one missing a wing. One whose cheeks are a bit red, like he scrubbed them not that long ago, one who curls a little closer in and now that Hermes is looking for it, he guesses it’s not really that much a surprise it’s not his Hypnos.
But he’s a Hypnos.
Hermes got born on Olympus; he’s got a family that loves him and he loves them. Olympus is hot though, and bright, and he’s always liked the deep dark of night, liked the blue hour where nothing seems real. He still remembers--he remembers what it was like, meeting Hypnos. Burnt his feet right through to soul, but--but—
It was like running home. Better.
Hypnos is vast. Dreaming. Sleep. So, so vast. It makes sense he’s so vast he’s across more than just the seas that Hermes jumps into and out of, makes sense he’s wide as the sea all stars that Hermes runs across to carry the dreams for the living and dead both.
“The Lethe doesn’t run out there?” Hermes asks.
“No,” Hypnos says. “You have to go through Erebus, and only Charon knows the way. Or maybe Zagreus, I think Chaos is soft on him. Everyone’s soft on him.”
Hermes is sitting on a bank, soul of him soaking in the Lethe. He kicks his feet, watches the light flash through the mist and water. She curls soothing, splashes his calves.
There’s a lake. He doesn’t think it’s supposed to be there.
He thinks he loves Hypnos.
Knows.
“That’s odd,” he says.
***
The run to jump off the cliff is exactly where it should be. So’s Apollo.
“Took your time,” Apollo says and Hermes doesn’t want to--he’s not going to weep, he’s not that gone. Might be too tired for it, after the last of those rocks he scrambled up.
He scrambled up them once before he was wholly divine; he sure doesn’t remember it being that difficult then. Scraped his knees bloody. Made Apollo click his tongue, still has the bandage somewhere.
He feels like he can barely breathe. Can’t see straight.
Maybe he should have taken Hypnos up on that offer to be carried.
“I wasn’t going to rob him of his pride,” Hypnos says.
“Sit,” Apollo says, catching Hermes’ shoulder as he sways on his feet, trying to pull in enough air, shivering. Fingers lyre worn, bow string calloused. “There’s time.”
“For?”
“Before you go home,” Apollo says, smiling easier than he ever does back home. Hermes doesn’t even resent being answered, just collapses grateful under a fig tree.
“This was supposed to happen,” Hypnos says, a statement that very much wants to be a question.
“Yes,” Apollo says, laughing, and drops a sheepskin, sunwarm, on Hermes’ shoulders.
“Does this mean I’m not an idiot this time?” Hermes asks.
“You’re still an idiot,” Apollo says, Hypnos says, and Hermes wastes a breath on a laugh, head dizzy.
***
Hermes isn’t very fast. Not fast as Apollo, not fast as Hypnos, not as fast as most people really--hard to be fast when you’re folks are ‘Dite and Dio, he likes to say, so he’ll say that now.
But he doesn’t need to be fast.
He was six when he figured out he could jump in some water, pop out some other, run across all the sea deep between. Mama was not impressed, he missed getting to go to Pop’s feast, a real shame that. Not that there weren’t others, but the ones when he was small enough to ride around on Pop’s shoulders, few and far between and in any case, the point is.
He just has to reach the river.
“Thanks for this,” Hermes says, smiling. Charon’s waiting, with his familiar clink of coin and his boat that always has ignored currents tugging and tugging. A real anchor, Charon--Hermes is sure he’ll understand.
He’s dying, he thinks. He thinks no one’s wanted to bring it up. He thinks it’s why they’re in such a hurry to get him to Chaos, so he can get home where it’s not hot enough for his sort of divinity to burn off.
He’s a blue hour sort of god. Morning mist. Dew that kisses brows after a very long, very pleasant night.
“Happy to help,” Hypnos says with a smile not happy at all. Hermes knows all Hypnos’ smiles, and this one is not happy even a little. This one wants a person to think he is.
A Hypnos.
Still Hypnos though, isn’t he?
“One last thing?” Hermes asks, holding Hypnos’ hands.
Apollo’s three steps away. Careful of his gaze that burns, and Hypnos is between him and Hermes. He probably thinks he knows exactly what Hermes is going to try, and he’s right, too.
But this Apollo’s all sunlight and fire.
“I don’t know,” Hypnos sighs out, smiling like it doesn’t matter when it does.
“A kiss for good luck?” Hermes asks anyway; Hypnos’ flushes and it almost makes him moonlit blue. It’s a good color on him, Hermes’ favourite.
Every Hypnos deserves that color. Dreams have given him so much, a whole life.
“Well, I mean,” Hypnos stammers. Hermes leans forward, catches him a kiss and the words fumbling. He kisses like his life depends on it, Charon and Apollo there be damned; he kisses like every dream and every lazy day they’ve woken in bed, twined around each other, the only way that there ever has been to kiss the Prince of Dreaming himself, the only way that matters, and Hermes’ heart glows hearing that little sound, hearing the Lethe’s delight, feeling all that mist roil so thick against and around them, safe—
“Say hi to Hypnos for me,” Hermes says.
“...what?” Hypnos asks, dazed.
“Love you,” Hermes adds.
Even archers can’t much deal with having gods pushed into them, future sight or no; Hermes isn’t fast but he’s heart light from a kiss and dreams still heady on his tongue and it’s only a step for him as he hears swears. Lethe’s home though, always, forever, everywhere.
Runs with her right over the edge of the waterfall, laughing.
There’s this lake where a river is supposed to run.
***
“Up,” Apollo says; Hermes stirs from a nap he doesn’t even remember falling in.
Hypnos is there, quiet. Looking at Hermes with a look Hermes can’t entirely parse, but it’s a look he’s gotten from Apollo before. He usually doesn’t like it when he gets that look, whatever happens next.
Hermes stands; the world follows a little more slowly. Everything follows a little more slowly, including him. But it’s not as bad as when they first got up here, over those last rocks. Might be he can finish this after all.
Hypnos’ hands are so cool on his face.
“For luck,” Hypnos says, kisses him. “Tell him I love him.”
“...who?” Hermes asks, dizzy.
“Time to go,” Apollo says, tugging Hermes away, to a drop that he knows. Hermes stares at it. Stares at the river far, far below, winding silver through the valley. Realizes, very suddenly, he will not be able to fly.
Stares at it, vertigo thick in hs chest.
He hates falling.
“It’s a dive,” Apollo corrects.
Pushes.
It’s a fall; it is, thankfully, long enough, he can turn it into a dive, all the air and speed pushing past, pushing off all the sleep and cold, all the terror of a fall jolting his heart moving--when did it get so slow? When did he? He didn’t even notice.
Strikes the water, the gleam right between space and time and everything in between, past stars and white columns and things not quite yet made, heart singing true, because the air is warmer, because there’s more light, because-because-because—
Slams into a wall, falls back on his ass on so much dry, dry silt.
An empty riverbed, a distant sea, and a wall, very high.
At least it’s warm.
***
There’s a dam.
Of course there’s a dam. Who put it there, why, why is it here and why is it in dreaming and why—
Hermes pushes, but it’s holding all of Lethe from breaking and he’s not even, he’s barely even, he’s just a twilight thing, a blue hour god, a god of dew and dreams and leading souls.
He is also, increasingly, furious.
He pushes; the ground beneath slips, mud and forgotten dreams and detritus that should have run to the sea.
He tries again.
***
“Than, please, I know this is--I’ll explain everything later, I will, but he’s going to die if you don’t—”
“Who?” Thanatos asks, and he looks alarmed which is a lot better than you were expecting, really, showing up while he’s working, but it’s still not moving. You know Than! It always takes so much to get him moving! Which there’s no time for but you’ve got to work with what you’ve got and—
“Hermes! He jumped in the lake and he’s not come up, Apollo says he can’t swim and and and I can’t go in, it’s not the Lethe, and please, you’ve got to—”
“He’s what?” Thanatos says, then he’s gone and you thank every star that for once, just this once, he’s listened.
***
Hermes studies the wall. He knows this kind of thing; might say he’s a professional at getting around them. Over them, under, whatever it takes.
This one is not one for going over; not one for going under either. At least not quick, and he wants to go quick. He’s nearly home, nearly away from every coming anywhere near the belly of the universe for good.
But his heart’s still bright from a fall turned dive; but the air is warm. But he’s in a place he can feel out time, a steady tick-tick-tock he hadn’t realized he’d lost track of.
Hermes didn’t like that look he got.
Does like proving people wrong. He doesn’t think Hypnos is much a prophet, and he heard Apollo laugh.
He gets his feet set in; the ground is dry. Hard. It’s a hot universe he’s from, a certain place. Easy to get his feet set with the air so dry, the ground.
It’s cracked, right where he slammed into it. It was a very long fall.
This would be easier with a hammer; his head feels light fetching his from the ether. He’s not been back long enough, but there’s a kiss still tingling his lips. That, or the wind burn. Either way, it’s enough to get him steady again.
It was a very long fall.
It’s a pretty heavy hammer, his grandpop’s. You’d expect that, wouldn’t you?
He wants to go home, but more than that—
He hates when people give him that look.
***
“You’re not Hermes,” Death says and Hermes considers trying to see if he can drown him or not.
“And you’re an idiot,” Hermes spits, exhausted and furious because there’s this dam and he can’t--he can’t--the ground keeps slipping, everywhere else here is so sharp, so firm, but the one place he wants it to be it’s not and here’s Thanatos, whose always been--look, Hermes is just not in a great mood, or place, and he’s got a timer and—
Thanatos draws up, imposing this deep in a lake that’s all these discarded dreams.
“You’re coming with me,” Thanatos says.
Hermes realizes, very quickly, several things.
“Absolutely,” Hermes says. “Just hold still.”
“What—”
Death is, in fact, the most stable place in the world to stand, and Than, bless his star born heart, has always been slow on the uptake.
Hermes shoves and this time, this time, it’s not him who gives first.
Almost does. Almost does, there’s a taste on his tongue, climbing up; his heart’s not supposed to feel like that, he doesn’t think, and Than’s managed to get to grips, hand around his ankle, but there’s stone cracking under his hands, all the Lethe’s memories twisting up, all those stagnant dreams that are supposed to run to the sea and if he just pushes hard enough.
There’s a crack like thunder somewhere; under his hands the wall shakes, and Lethe is laughing joy, all white.
He doesn’t remember much else.
White.
He remembers that.
And laughter. His, he thinks, but odd; he doesn’t have much a mouth for it. Not much of anything. Just...
White. Remembers that.
A hand, sun hot.
***
“I’m sorry,” you say. “I tried...”
“It’s okay,” you say.
You're under the House. Your standing on the banks of a river that runs to the sea. Your heart feels light. Your heart feels heavy. Your heart feels...
“He loves me,” you say, and you know what you mean is all of you. Even the ones no one thinks of.
You smile, bittersweet. Not one you’d let anyone but yourself see.
“I’m glad he helped.”
“Will he be okay?”
You shrug.
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
You hope so. You’d like... You’d like that. Seeing him again, in a different light.
Mom sure is mad but...
You kind of like it. Being able to just slip off and no one being able to say anything at all because who else is there who can follow dreaming? Hermes?
No.
At least not the one all certainty where you live, sunshine smile or not.
“Keep in touch,” you say, though you don’t have to.
You always are.
***
There’s a boy. You love him, but not the way he loves you.