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Chapter Text

“Tyche must be going through an 'attracted to you’ phase,” Melpomene noted as the book shelf collapsed just a foot away from Apollo.

Much as Apollo would like to contest her conclusion, the day’s events gave him pause.

Serendipitously, Apollo had chosen to use his third bathroom in the morning – thereby missing Hermes's enchantment in the second bathroom that would have flushed him to Timbuktu.

(The first bathroom was reserved for those occasions when he wished to impress someone, not that he’d entertained such a wish in the last couple of centuries – something Hermes of all gods knew perfectly well.)

Zeus had flung a technical, too-involved, pedantic question about the state of the ignominious youth at him during the council meeting, but Apollo had been prepared with a fitting rejoinder.

(His foresight was really something if a manifestation of him had already performed the requisite research without his main self making the executive decision.)

He’d chosen to teleport to the bookstore instead of driving Melpomene in his Mercedes and getting her stuck in a celestial traffic jam that would have made her late and incensed enough to curse him with a minor bout of diarrhoea, her current decade’s choice of punishment.

And now the bookshelf.

That collapsed without a hint of wind or unbalanced supports or a saboteur sneaking around pushing heavy structures onto blameless gods.

In a bookstore not yet open to the public, that Apollo had agreed to visit just the previous night after days of Melpomene’s cajoling, to attend the launch of her latest lover’s book.

Tyche really might be into him, Apollo realised as he looked at the arm-length splinter buried into the ground just a couple inches from his foot.

Then he dismissed the notion.

More like Eris had the hots for him, really, but he was just too good to fall for her machinations.

‘More like, you've already been through this day before,’ an alarmingly familiar voice snapped in his mind. ‘This day, this decade, and even this century!’

Only long years of experience kept Apollo from jumping at the sudden voice in his head – not because someone’s wishes had arrived peremptorily into his mind but because the voice was his own.

Apollo’s brain stalled. Was this an indicator that he'd have to perform a lobotomy on his own manifestation, as Artemis always kept threatening?

‘Or more like,’ Apollo’s voice continued, undeterred, ‘I have gone through this century before.’

Yes, his manifestation had clearly undergone some terrible trauma before he’d summoned it back if it was labouring under the impression that it had time-travelled.

He saw the future! That was clearly the mind-bending event that had wrecked the manifestation’s mind so thoroughly Apollo’s fraction couldn’t even seize upon the likeliest of solutions to his problem.

Apollo sighed at his own dilemma.

To merge or to skuttle? If he destroyed the mad manifestation, he’d lose a part of himself, lose a portion of his power, and suffer the consequences of deliberately unbalancing himself.

On the other hand, while the possibility of the damage persisting past merging was minuscule, it still existed – a good enough reason to resist melding until he had gathered more information about the cause of this delusion.

“Maybe you should go home and repent upon your actions since you have such bad karma,” Melpomene continued. “Nemesis really seems to have it out for you.”

“Didn’t you want me to extoll the virtues of your lover’s sob-worthy tale?” Apollo inquired drily, eager to postpone the headache inducing quandary for as long as possible.

“Oh, I know,” Melpomene clapped her hands together and enthused. “You should take a copy of the book, sign it, and hide it inside the bookstore. Make sure to use your most famous persona, and we’ll make it a treasure hunt.”

Apollo glared playfully at his muse.

She stared back unrepentantly at him from over the rim of her teacup.

Apollo blew out a breath before extending a hand. “Hand it over,” he said, resigned.

Melpomene grinned at him, lightening the aura of sorrow that hovered around her for a moment. Without a word, she rummaged into her big, brown handbag that could have been used to squash an unsuspecting watermelon into pulp, before bringing out a book with a blue jacket.

Right. Blue. Melpomene’s favourite colour.

Because blue signified sorrow, loss, listlessness, blankness, freedom, drowning, … and other things Apollo couldn’t quite remember at the moment.

Apollo took the seven-inch book but focused on wagging a finger at his friend.

“Now listen,” he warned her. “No inciting a riot no matter how hilarious you think it is. No spreading rumours about how I signed the one and only copy of this book before promptly expiring under a bookshelf, no matter how tragically ironic you find the notion.”

Melpomene made a face but nodded.

Apollo narrowed his eyes at her easy capitulation. And there! She was fiddling with the artfully frayed sleeves of her weather-inappropriate cardigan and tapping her boot on the tiles.

“And definitely no announcing that I cried while reading it, because I’m not going to read it and unsolicited requests for follow-ups of a review I never gave are as bad as covering myself in itching powder and then stuffing my clothes with nettles,” he shouted.

“What’s wrong with you?” Melpomene demanded incredulously. “You’re being even more paranoid than usual.”

I nearly got flushed, almost had the Sun chariot rear-ended  by an aeroplane, barely escaped getting pulped and then staked by a bookshelf, and definitely realised that the future is so horrible that it’s driven one of my manifestations into the arms of delusion. And now you’re threatening to destroy my professional reputation.

“It’s your face. It’s just too untrustworthy,” Apollo deadpanned instead.             

“There’s a simple solution to that,” Melpomene snarked. “You can take your unlucky ass to some forgotten corner and then rapidly depart before you set this place on fire!”

Apollo pouted, but didn’t take it personally. Melpomene always got frantic the closer she got to the end of a pregnancy.

Really, he should have known the moment she demanded he accompany her to a book launch. Not only did the Muse always insist on his presence in the days leading up to birthing a demigod, but she also dressed in that same hideous, olive-green cardigan that clashed horribly with her complexion, and the shapeless, calf-length, pleated skirt that reminded him of a puddle of mud.

Apollo flicked a glance at Melpomene’s flat abdomen and hoped she didn’t intend to make him act as immortal obstetrician like the few times he’d been bamboozled into holding her hand while she huffed and puffed and utterly failed at breathing exercises before giving up and going incorporeal.

Leaving him to catch a perfect little baby before it took a nosedive to the floor.

“Alright,” Apollo placated. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

Melpomene nodded, barely leashed tension making her vibrate in her seat.

Apollo pushed back the cosy armchair from the small table they’d taken in the reading corner of the two-storey bookstore. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see workers running around stressing about the wanton destruction occurring on the premises, while the person managing the counter spoke rapidly into the receiver of a telephone.

He shook his head before taking the steps for the second floor.

He didn’t need to fulfil Melpomene’s arbitrary, inconstant demands, but since the alternative was listening to his manifestation rave about time-travelling, Apollo found his feet unerringly leading him to the romance section.

It probably said something about the tastes of the average customer that half the floor was dedicated to lurid bodice-rippers, psychedelic dreams pretending at philosophy, and the romantic, puerile version of a bildungsroman.  

The other half was dedicated to books related to the school curriculum, so Apollo wasn’t certain just what it said.

But it definitely said something.   

Apollo gave the centre-table stacked with bestsellers and for some strange reason, plastic-wrapped baskets of potpourri, a wide berth and picked a shelf at random.

The empty floor echoed with the impact of his Oxfords on the white tiles. The noise drilled into his skull as a counterpart to the increasingly strident demands his manifestation made to be let free to meld with him.

Hah, joke was on the manifestation. They might both be Apollo, but that simply meant Apollo knew just what was going through his alter’s mind. There was a reason he didn’t divide for long periods, and why he always assigned a highly specific task to every manifestation he did decide to break into.

He was Apollo. Subsuming others came naturally to him.

And that was the answer, wasn’t it? No, Apollo wouldn’t be melding if the other Apollo truly believed his being and experiences would be enough to override the current Apollo.

Certainly, Apollo admitted to himself as he took up a position in front of a bookshelf populated with pastel covers and sloping, curving, highly decorated serif fonts – the manifestation even now taking up room in his brain had brought along with it a concerningly large amount of power.

Even now, Apollo wanted to sing, dance, fight, fuck. He wanted to destroy towns and create monuments.

He hadn’t known he’d split himself in half. But he must have because he’d doubled.  

Doubled and come into possession of a burgeoning headache that reminded him of his other half.

Apollo shook his head before bringing the book Melpomene had foisted on him in front of his face.

He winced as a sharp stab of pain went though his head. The words on the book cover swam before his eyes, but by now, Apollo’s obstinacy had begun to kick in.

Other Apollo would distract him, strike him low with debilitating pain, render him unable to focus on the essential matters in life, and then swoop in to seize on any vulnerability, would he?

Well, Apollo would simply pop a couple of the painkillers that Asclepius had made from snake venom (which functioned entirely too similarly to certain controlled substances, not that he’d ever accuse his son of attempting to drug gods into a stupor even if it was true), and stubbornly slog through every single event in his calendar.

And it was a light day indeed if Apollo’s every hour was only quadruple-booked.

Apollo glared at the book, willing it to solidify into an image not drawn by a pixel brush.

The vibrations in the room subtly shifted as the door opened and then closed. The air warmed up a fraction as someone entered, but Apollo dismissed it.

It wasn’t Melpomene, which meant either Apollo would get disturbed or he wouldn’t.

He didn’t care either way.

Unerringly, like there was a floating, neon marker over his head, footsteps made their way in his direction.

The book cover, instead of clearing, blurred into swirls of blue and orange indistinguishable from the skin of his hand and the faint blue tinge of the tiles on the floor.

Apollo rattled the painting he’d locked up his manifestation inside, willing him to desist in his attempts to ruin Apollo’s day already.

The footsteps came to a stuttering halt at the edge of the row of bookshelves Apollo had ensconced himself within, before picking up speed.

Apollo frowned. He hoped this wasn’t another person hoping for an autograph. Perhaps he shouldn’t have stepped onto the stage with the face he currently preferred to wear all the time, but why not?

“I wouldn't pick that if I were you,” a beloved voice commented.

Apollo’s heart faltered.

Stopped.

The voice echoed through his brain like a gong clanging right next to his ear.

He couldn’t hear anything but the hoarse tones quavering with apprehension, couldn’t focus on anything but the hint of steel as she bulldozed through all obstacles.

He’d heard this voice laugh, cry, choke, scream, whisper. He’d fallen asleep to this voice and woken up to this voice humming in his ear.

He’d never heard this voice in his life.  

Simultaneously shocked, elated, and horrified, Apollo whirled around.

Discombobulation threatened to overwhelm him.

What should have been a messy braid instead lay neatly pinned in place atop the young woman’s head.

The creases beneath her eyes from squinting at his phone and the laughter lines he’d delighted in etching across her skin had been wiped away by the brush of youth.

Instead of an overlarge sweatshirt (his, his, he’d begun wearing sweatshirts just so he could dress her in them and nothing else) and a pair of jeans faded from multiple washes, she wore a flower-print top expertly hand-stitched to her frame and a pair of cotton trousers so painfully new they still smelt of dye.

Her breasts should have been larger, his mind insisted. Her head should have come up beyond his collarbone, her hips should have been wider, and her body faintly translucent.

His vision flickered.

A stranger stared back at him with vibrant green eyes. “Leukaemia, you know,” she prompted.

With a jerk of his head, Apollo glanced back at the book in his hand. The white flower with its blood-drenched six petals looked back at him from the cover. The words Lost in your memory, emblazoned on the jacket in golden, spidery letter front, seemed to mock him.

“Really?” Apollo asked with a dry throat. “Must be contagious, the way it’s going around.”

“Love Story,” the woman said knowledgeably.

Nausea burbled up in his stomach – like the effervescent froth the one time he’d accidentally swallowed a bath bomb. (There was a reason Apollo entertained nothing but the strictest of hatreds for all soaps with aspirations towards appearing edible.)

“Eric Segal. Love Story,” the woman elaborated at Apollo’s continued silence. “Then there’s A Walk to Remember and the whole Nicholas Sparks epidemic. And suddenly, one of the leads dying after a suitably photogenic event is romantic.”

Death was neither pleasant nor attractive. The lead dying was …

Cracking, splintering, screaming Earth. Waters towering over an island that should never drown.

A determined face smiling at him for the last time before …

A tiny hand on his arm, the voice of knowledge filtering through Apollo’s panic, “If you go there, she'll burn.”

The horrified incomprehension as ichor lit up the body he'd traced with his hands and lips just that morning. The blank refusal to acknowledge the scene before his eyes as his wife glowed and glowed and failed to ascend.

As she flickered, and tottered, and collapsed, and …

Water.

Just … water.

Everywhere.

“That’s horrible,” Apollo muttered, unsure whether he was responding to the woman he’d one day marry and watch die or to the part of himself that sincerely believed he’d already lived through it.

The young woman made a face as she looked at the book in his hand. “I suppose it’s something about catharsis,” she allowed ungraciously. “Reading someone else undergo all the terror and pain of watching a loved one fade away, immersing yourself into the narrative until you’re shedding tears and – then to realise it didn't happen to you after all.”

“A purging of the emotions,” Apollo croaked, even though seeing the future play out as a particularly tragic play had never prepared him for the pain.

Sea green eyes gazed into his, a strange anticipation in them that faded the longer he remained silent.

She turned back to the shelf, a manic sort of energy filling her limbs as she reordered the books according to some criteria known only to herself.

“Of course,” she mocked, “only certain kinds of cancer are romantic. You get testicular cancer, and Disney will crop you off the frame altogether.”

“Princess Diaries?” Apollo guessed, inordinately thrilled to know this fact.

(Inordinately thrilled to focus on something, anything, other the puddle of water he couldn’t protect her from becoming.

He didn’t even know if he wanted to protect her.)

“Wonderful movies, but not the most faithful of renditions, you know?” she confided.

Apollo grinned back conspiratorially, even though he'd never seen any Princess Diaries. It seemed the type of thing one of his children would wax poetic over until he gave in and watched it just to know what all the fuss was about, but he'd yet to undergo that fate.

‘Anne Hathaway looked pretty. And the chemistry with Chris Pine,' Apollo’s foresight addled manifestation reminisced nostalgically.

“So, what would you recommend if not the book being launched today?” Apollo teased.

(The book launch she’d come to attend, for a book whose ending she already knew, while knowing exactly where Apollo stood like she’d put bugs on his clothes.)

She rocked on her heels while perusing the shelves. She raised a hand to tuck her hair behind her ear, only to lower it in embarrassment as her fingers brushed against a hairpin.

“Well, not that one – it’s just too much confusing prose that glorifies stalking your person of interest,” she murmured while pointing at a book with a maroon cover.

“And that one has too much gratuitous porn, except it’s not even good, so just … why?”

Apollo chuckled.

She glanced at him shyly before turning back to a book with the word “Midnight” in its name and purple highlights against the cityscape forming the front cover.

“That one is supernatural too, but the main lead is just too … broody. And stuck in his neuroses. And also – it’s not her responsibility to be some breath of fresh air fixing up his life. Like, all he needed was love and hers was just pure enough while everyone else was just a one-night stand.” By the end, her voice had risen in agitation.

“You don’t like love fixing people or broody leads?” Apollo inquired, uncertain why precisely her opinions on romance novels was important to him, but sure that it was.

She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not … love can help,” she tried to explain. “But it’s not enough. Knowing someone loves you is good – but it can’t be everything.”

“It can be the foundation you build your life on,” Apollo pointed out.

“It shouldn’t be everything,” she insisted. “Because that just reduces you to a caricature of a person who only exists as long as someone loves you. You can’t define yourself by the person you’re in love with, because one day they’re going to be gone and you’re going to be left alone, and that day …” she choked off.   

“That day,” Apollo told her softly, “the memory of the love would still remain. And it would still be the foundation, still be a bracing strut, still be the frame you build your life around. And one day, you’ll find a new post to twine around, and that would still be okay.”

She stared at him, eyes wide with a confused hurt.

Apollo turned back to the shelf, trying to resist the shame curling around his gut. He’d reassured her – that she’d taken it as assurance that she was so insignificant that even the pain of parting wouldn’t be enough to stop him from enjoying the present was … not his problem.

‘Don’t,’ Other Apollo warned in a strained voice.

‘Don’t what?’ Apollo mocked, the despair growing ever stronger at this proof of his misstep.

But the woman he’d one day like enough to sign a few useless papers, that would hopefully not gain Hera’s attention, with was stronger. She rallied, even if the bright smile on her face seemed all too fragile to Apollo.

“You’ll like the next one then. It’s got immortal mummies in it,” she told him.

Apollo looked at the name of the author and experienced nothing but awkward incredulity. “Bram Stoker?”

“There’s a curse too,” she pointed out gleefully.

Was this a hint at his own tendency to curse people? Because she should really resist being quite this ecstatic while pointing out his flaws. What if he took it badly?

“It doesn’t seem like a romance,” he intoned dryly.

The woman stuck out her lower lip in a pout that sent a frisson of heat down Apollo’s abdomen. “Romance is just another word for fantasies dreamt by someone who’s never actually experienced love,” she told him. “If it were real, there would be a lot more blood, emotional gore, indifference, missed opportunities, and in case we forget – boredom.”

“The tragedy of happily ever-after,” Apollo concurred, “every day is the same. No highs and no lows with any stakes worth risking everything for.”

The woman blinked owlishly at him before breathing out in the tones of one arriving at a surprising realisation, “Honestly? That sounds really nice. I’d love to lead a perfectly banal life with zero danger, where every day is just … a house with a family that won’t ever leave.”

I can’t give you that.

He didn’t say it. He’d do his best to pretend, wouldn’t he? He’d create a mould of what she wanted and pour himself into it. He’d cut off the pieces that failed to fit, all in a bid to make her happy.

Because he’d fall so desperately for her, for the him she made him want to be, that he’d kill himself for her.

“So, slice-of-life is your poison of choice?” Apollo guessed instead of voicing any of the disturbing conclusions he’d arrived at.

The woman studied him, clearly contemplating whether to reveal a secret or not.

Apollo widened his eyes, softened his jaw, and altogether did his best to appear trustworthy.         

She looked around the shelves, failed to find whatever she was looking for, and simply grabbed Apollo’s hand.

The touch was like being hit by a lightning bolt. Terrifying, invigorating, horrible.

Wonderful.

Whatever he’d done to infuriate Zeus yet again was something that ought to be repeated again and again because it was just that worth it.

He never wanted the moment to end because once it did, the fear and pain would come rushing in and he’d be grovelling at Zeus’s feet, apologising for his transgressions and promising to do better and resolving to avoid erring this conspicuously ever again.

Apollo wanted to keep holding his wife’s hand. Wanted to never let go. Wanted to shy away and run in the other direction because meeting her would be the exact opposite of walking the straight and narrow.   

He’d fall off the tightrope into the rushing waters of the Styx and get washed straight into Chaos.

(He was a nebula. He was gas and nuclear fusion and trembling, dissipating clouds blown away by the advent of the primordial.

He was a nebula wrapped around a dead star and if he failed, then his precious star would never spark with the beginnings of fusion, would forever remain a cold, dead thing that might orbit around a part of him but would never dance with him.

He was a nebula being destroyed with every word of the primordial.

Wanted.

She’d wanted something.

Altars and temples and … something.

The primordial had wanted something, had wanted a return to something Apollo couldn’t give, had voiced only the surface-most of her intentions, and then she’d …)  

Apollo stumbled along the heels of the woman who’d fight the Fates and Chaos for him, letting her tow him along to the Historical Fiction section.

Regency gowns, Scottish kilts, Roman togas, and Grecian slips gazed back at him as she led him straight to the ‘H’s.

“That one,” she told him, daring him to laugh.

Frederica.

(“It’s funny,” she shrugged before curling deeper into his chest.

“This is the third time I’m reading this book to you,” Apollo pointed out to the tousled head on his chest.

“There’ll probably be a fourth time too,” she responded unrepentantly.

“Because it’s funny,” he teased.

She looked up with a softness in her eyes she only reserved for him. “Because she’s self-sufficient and able to make ends meet all on her own, and he knows that. But when she needs help, he’s always there. Beside her. Letting her make her own decisions but always there to offer advice and shore up the breaks in the banks she’s built.”

“And what does she give him?” he whispered back, gripped by the certainty that they weren’t talking about a book.

She smiled back, albeit a little sadly. “I don’t know.”

Apollo bent his neck and deposited a kiss to the top of her head. “Everything he wants,” he told her. “She gives him excitement, family, something to care for, and the certainty that they’re only together because they both want it. She could leave and he could abandon her, and they’d both go on perfectly well. But they don’t.”

Green eyes gleamed up at him with the sheen of hope.

“Because they both chose it,” he concluded.)    

“That’s a good one,” Apollo admitted hoarsely before hastily changing the subject. “What about the others. Any of these good?”

That started the woman off on a tangent about elitism, applying the morals of today on the tales of yesteryear, the perils of ruined social reputation, and the strange world novels lived in where love conquered all and no duchess got ostracised or murdered for marrying the footman.

“You seem to have read them all,” Apollo noted, amusement curling through him.

“Occasionally,” she stated with asperity, “I pretend to be a voracious reader.”

Then she grinned. “In reality, I read the spark notes and the wiki page.”

Despite himself, Apollo laughed. He supposed it wasn't that different to consuming reviews and blurbs until you could pretend at knowledge.

(Wikipedia hadn’t been created yet. Nicholas Sparks wasn’t a name Melpomene had mentioned even in passing.

The delight of meeting someone who referenced the future battled with the apprehension of meeting someone who referenced the future. Prescience was dangerous. Especially when the person so cursed stood wrapped in a tangle of the Fates’ threads).

“Are you planning to get one of these books and turn your pretence into reality then?” Apollo questioned.

His future wife snorted. “Are you kidding me? I am too broke and too dyslexic to buy this. No, I came for something else.”

“Me?” he quipped.

She gigged involuntarily before stifling the sound. “Think too highly of yourself, don’t you?” she demanded with mock seriousness. “I will have you know this store is currently running a twenty-five per cent discount on all books, and I happen to be in need of a few references.”

“Which kind?” Apollo pressed knowingly. She was definitely there just to meet him. Had she seen it in a vision or just tracked the crimson, gold-flecked string between them?

Because he could. Apollo could have traced the path of the string till it deposited him right in front of her. Some part of him even had.

(He was playing in the centre of a stone amphitheatre, the sole musician in a world ringing with the cacophony of discord.

A girl lay asleep on the seats, a clear affront as she ignored the blessing he was bestowing upon her, but the exhausted cast to her features gave him pause.

He would have his revenge, Apollo determined. But it didn’t have to be quite yet. She’d lost her mother, gotten struck by lightning, and arrested. It was enough misfortune for the moment.

A broken toy didn’t chime, after all. And he still needed her to play her part in the orchestra.)      

She sniffed, pouted with displeasure, and then gently tugged him to the half of the floor given over to books concerning the SAT, ACT, AP curriculum, and various other guidebooks proclaiming themselves to be the comprehensive book on the subject.

She didn’t lead him to the guide books. Or, well, she did. But not to the college entrance or Advance Placement ones.

She took him to the guidebooks on the ordinary classes.  

“This,” she declared with the pride that came from knowing you were doing something embarrassing, but that it would humiliate the other person more than you.

Too bad for her that Apollo was the God of Education. And he didn’t discriminate on the basis of a person’s ability to regurgitate only the most complex concepts.

“That’s wonderful,” he cheered. “Finally admitted that you’re this old, and still struggling to pass high school?”

How old was she again? Older than sixteen, he knew with a bone-deep certainty, but Apollo couldn’t quite ascertain her age. Couldn’t quite reconcile the decade his manifestation insisted they’d lived together with the juvenile features smirking at him.   

“The pursuit of knowledge is eternal,” she proclaimed sagely. “As long as I keep trying, aren’t you proud of me?”  

She raised an eyebrow – an impish expression that settled something in his stomach at the same time that it inflamed other parts.

With the cold clarity of a rash decision, Apollo realised that he'd been overcomplicating things. This woman, with her sad eyes and hopeful hands, interested him, did she not?

There was a very simple way to drive her out of his mind.

He placed the book back on the rack, grabbed her by the waist, and pushed her against the bookcase.

Her eyes widened as her hand instinctively grabbed his arm in the beginnings of a twist that would release her from all but a god’s grasp. 

But then she paused … and aborted the motion.

He took a step forward, taking no small amount of pleasure from the way her breath caught in her throat, the way her heart sped up against his chest.

Apollo swallowed in the sight of the familiar stranger, knowing that if he took this step, there would be no going back.

He sighed.

And captured her mouth in a kiss.

Chapter Text

Apollo couldn’t remember what he’d intended to achieve with the kiss. It must have been something significant, because he’d dismissed all the nagging doubts, the vaguest suspicion that something beyond his comprehension was transpiring, and even the inkling that were he to touch her, this woman would drive all sense from him.

It didn’t matter anymore.

The first taste of chocolate had desire surging through him. Abruptly, he wanted to bite her lips and map every inch of her mouth with his tongue. He wanted to cup the breasts squeezed so cruelly between their bodies and knead them into tight orbs flushed from his attention. He wanted to lift her up and rock into the cradle of her thighs until fabric gave way and he sank into the welcoming embrace of her body.

But he waited.

Waited for the tense frame in his arms to relax.

One moment.

Two moments.

Three moments.

(He wouldn't force the issue. If she didn't want him, though he couldn't fathom the notion, then he’d draw back, laugh a lie, and withdraw to nurse the rage rising within him at even the possibility of rejection.)

A minute tremble.

The resistance flowed out of lithe limbs and the woman pressed up against him.

Once stiff arms twined around his neck and waist, before an intrepid hand snuck across his ass.

Lips that had been perfunctorily moving against his parted and a bold tongue licked across his teeth.

Apollo chuckled, surprised at his own hesitation.

Of course she wanted him back. Who wouldn’t?

With his reservations so handily relieved, Apollo wasted no time in running his hands all over her body. Skimming past her waist, reacquainting himself with the small of her back that still elicited the most tempting of shivers, brushing his knuckles against the trembling muscles of her abdomen, slipping a hand up her top – Apollo left no inch of her torso untouched.

He palmed her bra-covered breast, feeling the firm, warm weight before applying the slightest of pressure.

Again, that same sense of disorientation, as if the flesh should have overflowed his hand, should have broken out into goosebumps at the smallest touch, should have prompted pleading moans.

Dissatisfied, Apollo pushed the bra up so that he could trail his fingers against her bare breast.

Gratifyingly, she gasped.

Apollo idly trailed his fingertips across the expanse of skin, feeling as the orb tensed and jumped from his caresses.

He flicked her nipple.

Her whole frame jolted before she whispered into his mouth, “Really? We’re really doing this in a bookstore? There might be CCTV cameras, you know?”

“That just means we should put on a good show for our observers, doesn’t it?” he murmured back.

Heat crept up her cheeks as her eyes danced with a mixture of interest, shame, and a boundless faith in him that sent Apollo’s stomach swooping.

He circled her nipple with his index finger, feeling the skin pebble up into a hard point just begging for his teeth.

Her breath hitched and she squirmed, but her eyes skimmed around the Academic section of the bookstore they’d found themselves in, searching for any accidental voyeur.

Well, if she still feared observers, Apollo probably shouldn’t withdraw his hands from her body to grasp the bottom of her top. He shouldn’t tug the fabric up to expose the waistband of her trousers, the dip of her navel, the outline of her ribs, and the white of her bra.

He shouldn’t continue to tug the top off her shoulders and up her arms and past her elbows.

He shouldn’t bind her wrists with the twisted-up fabric and pull her trapped hands behind her head.

But that was exactly what he did.

Shivers wracked her frame, but she kept her hands obediently behind her neck.

“Good girl,” he approved, delighting in the pleased flush that suffused her cheeks.

Apollo pressed closer as he wrapped his arms around her back even though they were already as close as could be.

Necessity wasn’t the point after all. The way she swallowed at the press of his chest against her breasts, the way she jerked her hips at the insistent push of his thigh between her legs – that was the goal.

He flicked open the clasps of her bra.

Apollo suddenly dithered. It wasn’t that complicated a question, he could simply even vanish the offending piece of fabric entirely, but he found himself frozen with indecision.

Or well, not frozen exactly, as he ran a finger along the line the bra strap had indented into her skin.

“Poor baby,” he murmured. “This is clearly a hint that you should stop wearing bras.”

She huffed out a disbelieving laugh as he met her eyes, a teasing curl to his lips.

She had to like it. No matter what, she had to like it. She had to crave his touch, his words, his praise, his very presence. He had to twine himself around her till she couldn’t distinguish where their edges met. 

However, since she had yet to resign herself to a spot of exhibition, Apollo was a good husband and hid her swollen breasts and their tight peaks with his hands and mouth.

One hand to bounce a breast, and trace his name in Ancient Greek with just a slightly warm finger across sensitive skin, before caressing the hard point of its nipple with painful gentleness.

Interspersed generously, of course, with pinches that followed no rhyme or order and fell on her skin each time like a sudden ember. 

And his mouth to lick a stripe across the other nipple before it feared abandonment only to withdraw and breathe out heated air on the damp flesh.

She flinched before arching her back to give him better access.

He shouldn’t laugh, Apollo told himself. Even though the joy at getting to do this again made him want to burst out into song, dance a jig, and immortalise this moment in photographs and paintings, he shouldn’t laugh.

He latched onto the nipple instead, busying his mouth with drawing deeply at the hard flesh. It smelled like chocolate and tasted of bitter moisturizer, but Apollo couldn’t resist the urge to lick across the entire trapped nipple.

He’d wipe off any remains off her skin but those he left behind, Apollo decided. Moisturizer? He was sure he could massage olive oil into her skin – running his hands along her forearms and defined biceps, digging his fingers into the muscles of her shoulders and tracing the line of her spine, pressing kisses across her thighs and rubbing at the pert ass pushing insistently at his hand.

And once she was suitably flushed and gleaming under his light, he’d part her legs and massage her pussy with his lips and tongue until the taste of her wetness was all he could think of.

Couldn’t she decide faster, Apollo wondered with sudden frustration. His cock ached with the need to bury itself inside her, and the thigh brushing against it just made the flames burn hotter.

Only partially to punish her, Apollo took her nipple between his teeth and flicked his tongue across the tip several times in rapid succession.

His wife moaned. “Alright!” she cried out. “If I can put up a show in front of the entirety of Aphrodite’s party, what’s a closed bookstore?”

Finally!

Apollo slipped his hand down the elastic waistband of her trousers only to find another layer of fabric in the form of her panties.

Apollo wanted to laugh, but this time, it wasn’t from joy.

Of course she was wearing underwear – so was he.

He’d just vanished his.

He pushed aside the damp cotton strip concealing her pussy and just rested his fingers on the beating heart between her legs.

Electricity raced through his veins as she whined before tilting her hips and guiding his hand where she needed it most.

He gathered the wetness leaking from her pussy and stroked a finger across her clit.

She trembled.

He waited – not knowing what for but certain that this was the point where either things would progress wonderfully well ...

Or go dreadfully wrong.

She abandoned her attempts to pull all her hair out by its roots and pulled her trapped hands over her head and down.

Apollo would have frowned, would have stilled his fingers, would have removed his mouth from the nipple stabbing at his tongue, but all he could do was wait.

She pushed his face away from her breast and brought her hands to the waistband of his trousers and fumbled at the button.

Was he the only one waiting for catastrophe, he wondered, before remembering that he was the only one with any true knowledge of the future.

As far as the woman in front of him was concerned, she was about to have exhibitionist sex with a man who had his hand buried in her pants. Naturally, she ought to be slipping the loop off the button of his pants before tugging down the fly and pulling out his cock.

He was going to punish her for this, Apollo decided. When he positioned his lovers in a certain way, he expected them to stay put. And if she couldn’t maintain posture by herself, then he’d simply have to anchor her hands to the wall.

It got infinitely harder to think with a warm hand wrapped his cock and dampness soaking his hand as he pushed a finger inside a searing hot pussy.

(Had she said Aphrodite? That sounded bad.)

He’d punish her, but for the moment, he just wanted to stretch her enough that he could fuck her.

It wasn’t her fault she could see far enough, deep enough to see her own …

Apollo didn’t know. The thought drifted out of his mind like chaff in the wind.

His wife glided her fist a couple of times up and down his cock before she paused and proceeded to rub insistently at the sensitive skin just below his cockhead.

Apollo’s abdomen clenched, driving all thoughts of Aphrodite and her inevitable machinations to the back of his mind.

He breathed against the saliva-damp flesh of his wife’s breast as she slid her entire palm over the top of his cock. She twisted her wrist, adding a bite of pain to the pleasure settling at the base of his spine, before stroking his entire length with the smooth glide of precum.

His head pounded.

His manifestation, locked away behind the portrait he’d created just to store the parts of him that spent too long without contact with the rest of him, was screaming something.

Danger.

Something dangerous was about to happen, something terrible was about to happen and his happiness, his desire, his wife, his, his, his, was going to collapse and disintegrate and leave him and there was nothing he could do about that because he didn’t have powers, he couldn’t fix her, she was dead, dead, dead.

“C’mon, c’mon, faster,” his wife (his wife?) urged him as she pulled his wrist out of her pants.

Right. Fast. Because she was about to die.

Wait. No.

She wasn’t going to die.

They hadn’t even had sex yet, let alone birth the kid holding his hand while she did die.

Apollo shook his head free of the nonsense his manifestation had managed to paint his mind with before grabbing the woman, alive and desperate with want in front of him, under her thighs.

He hoisted her up. Her legs instinctively came up to wrap around his legs while her hands settled on his chest.    

As her back met against the book shelf with a dull thud, the wooden structure wobbled alarmingly. “The shelf will fall!” she yelped.

Despite her protests, however, her hands made quick work of undoing the buttons of his shirt before yanking the clothing apart.

Apollo laughed. “Don’t worry. The owners were very forward thinking. It's against a wall.”

She snickered. “More forward thinking than us, for sure, since my pants are still on.”

In demonstration, she squeezed the legs wrapped around his hips.

Apollo quirked an eyebrow. “Are they?” he teased while vanishing the soft cotton.

Her eyes darkened as the length of his cock pressed against her parted lower lips.

“Well, I suppose this is pretty handy,” she murmured.

He rocked his hips, allowing his cock to slide a fraction up and down – and across her clit.

Her pussy lips fluttered against the underside of his cock, prompting him to repeat the motion.

She slid her hands up his chest and to the hollow of his throat.

The warmth at the vulnerable spot made him rock his hips again.

She tickled his Adam’s apple before trailing her fingers up his jaw. A single fingertip gently stroked his upper lip before dipping down to enter his parted mouth.

Apollo licked teasingly at the finger before sucking it in up to the first knuckle. He maintained eye contact as he laved the digit, sending subliminal thoughts her way that this could have been her clit getting licked and sucked and brushed by the edges of his teeth – if only she hadn’t hurried.

She pulled her finger away with a pop that Apollo only slightly overemphasised, before looping her arms around his neck.

“Hope you can take the weight,” she challenged before tensing her thighs, and with intent clear in her eyes, raised herself off Apollo’s bracing hands.

Her forearms dug into his shoulders, but he was a god. If this were enough to make Apollo collapse with pain, his cock didn’t deserve to kiss her pussy.

The head of his cock lodged inside the opening as if it had practiced this manoeuvre a hundred times.

She dropped down.

She’d needed more preparation, Apollo realised instantly. Not the kind that a virgin pussy required, but she’d certainly refrained from sex for long enough that her walls protested the stretch.

She pulled off the couple of inches she’d taken in before sliding down again.

Apollo sucked in a breath past his clenched teeth and tried to hold still while she worked his cock deeper and deeper into herself.

‘Careful,’ his manifestation murmured.

‘She’s not hurt,’ he snapped back.

She was wet and eager and opening up beautifully around his cock. He didn’t have to push healing energy into her body, didn’t have to encourage artificial laxness in her vaginal muscles, and certainly didn’t have to worry about pressing past what she was comfortable with considering she was the one rocking her hips.

‘That’s not what I meant,’ the other part of Apollo whispered back, concern even more apparent in his mental voice.

Apollo dismissed the melodrama but couldn’t disregard the apprehension that had settled in the pit of his stomach.

The moment his wife managed to take in his entire cock, he shifted one of his hands to her waist and stilled her hips.

She tried to lever herself up again,

“No baby,” he whispered. “You’ll take what I give you.”

She shuddered. “Please don’t make me wait,” she pleaded.

He took her mouth in a kiss that was all gentle lips and caressing tongues that expressed just how much he loved her and simultaneously proved completely unsatisfactory to satiate her need.

She whined.

He captured her lower lip between his teeth and bit down.

Gently.

Not enough to break skin, but enough to shock her.

And he waited.

She tried to rock herself again, tried to rub her clit against his pubis, tried to leverage her arms around his shoulders to escape his constricting hold.

What was he waiting for? 

He drew back his hips, sliding inch by inch out of clinging tightness, before thrusting back inside in one go.

She whimpered.

“Did it hurt?” he mocked. The concern was certainly real enough, but not directed towards any physical sting.

What was he worried about?

“More, please,” she begged. “Stop teasing.”

He could certainly comply.

He could also draw back excruciatingly slowly until his cock popped out. 

So he did.

“Apollo!” she whined.

Apollo jerked. He hadn’t introduced himself.

‘Of course she knows my name,’ Other Apollo scoffed.

‘Because she’s seen it or because you’ve said it?’ he demanded even as he circled his hips.

The head of his cock slipped through the wetness, dragging over her pussy lips and sliding over her clit before Apollo once more poked at the hole opening and closing spasmodically in entreaty.

‘Why can’t it be both?’ his intransigent manifestation taunted.

Apollo’s cock hovered at the opening to her pussy, letting it struggle to close over the head of his cock, to drag it inside, to tempt him into finally starting to move.

Why not, indeed, Apollo wondered. He’d never been good at denying himself unless the consequences were dire indeed. Why would he start now, or whenever his disobedient manifestation had tossed all sense to the winds and entangled himself hopelessly with the nameless woman in front of him?

Apollo pushed past the resistance of her pussy to bury himself to the hilt inside her.

She moaned.

He pulled back. Rocked back inside. Rotated his hip. Pulled back. Changed angles and thrust back inside.

Brushed against her clitoris.

And repeat.

It was nice. Objectively speaking, it was nothing but nice and performative.

Apollo’s breath still sped up, his mind still went foggy with the perfume of chocolate and bay leaves and the musk of sex, and his hips still sped up until he was fucking into her forcefully enough to bang her back against the bookshelves.

A loud noise drifted through the floor from downstairs, a break in the steady chatter of a store full of book lovers, before the slap of skin against skin overwhelmed all of Apollo’s auditory senses.

Her gasps, her whines, her moans – every shift of her body, every nail digging into the nape of his neck, every tug on his scalp as she fisted his hair. It was everything.

He couldn’t focus on the people downstairs or how the noises of their fucking were no doubt transmitting with crystal clarity through the tiled floor to everyone gathered for the book launch.

He couldn’t focus on Aphrodite, with a gaze full of interest ever since her name had been taken. Couldn’t focus on Hermes, who’d glared and huffed and puffed at his failed prank before he’d settled in to enjoy all the mishaps Apollo had barely avoided until the Sun God had tripped into a pussy. 

Couldn’t even focus on Melpomene, praying with all her might for him to stop dragging it out and come already so she could stop pretending there was a particularly clumsy repairman fixing up the first floor.

Another set of books tumbled off the shelves from the force of their movements.

‘What’s her name?’ Apollo asked.

He hadn’t asked, taken in by the bone-deep familiarity that made names meaningless, and now it felt too late. He wasn’t such a cad that he’d fuck a woman and not even know her name.

Unfortunately, his attempts to pluck it out of her mind were met with walls erected too high and too wide for him to surmount without inflicting tremendous damage.

‘Percy,’ Other Apollo whispered as if sending out a prayer to be noticed. ‘Percy. My wife.’

It happened as they neared completion. Percy tucked her head against his collarbone, worrying at the skin as if determined to leave a mark for him to remember. Her pussy spasmed around his cock – letting him know that a few more bruising thrusts that brushed against her clit, and she’d be breaking apart in his arms.

He pushed in again and rotated his hips, rubbing her clit with his pubic bone and letting the wiry curls there scratch tantalisingly at the bundle of nerves.

Her pussy spasmed again.

Apollo’s hand sank into Percy’s ass, less finding a depression in supple skin and more fruitlessly grasping at flowing water.

Panic gripped him by the hair and held him still.

No. Not again. Not this time.

Apollo sank his power into his wife – every point of contact between them another passage to channel order.

His hand under her thigh, his chest against her nipples, his hips trapped between her legs, his cock inside her pussy, his balls pressing against her ass, her teeth buried in the crook of his shoulder.

She trembled – a full body shudder that threatened to unlock her knees and send her toppling to the ground.

Apollo merely tightened his grip, exultant as pure skin and flesh gave enticingly beneath his hands.

Could she feel it, he wondered wildly. Could she feel the tendrils of his being sinking into every single cell of hers? Because she should.

She should feel him touch every hidden nook and cranny of hers that she'd ever dared conceal, should feel him so deeply that she'd never be rid of the indelible imprint he'd leave on her soul.

Just like she'd done to him.

Reluctantly, Apollo grabbed her by the hair and removed her mouth from the reddened skin of his shoulder.

Lost, overwhelmed eyes blinked back at him – their pupils finally blown large enough to hide all but a thin circle of viridian.

Apollo returned his hand to her waist once again, assured as to her solid presence in his arms.

He pulled back his hips, dragging his cock against the wet walls gripping at him so sweetly until the head popped free.

Her breath hitched, something of a whine just below the involuntary gasp.

Apollo could have resisted.

He didn’t.

He tilted his head and bit the red lips swollen so temptingly before him.

His wife moaned into his mouth as the head of his cock rubbed against her vagina, found the opening it had so recently exited, and slipped in.

Apollo thrust forward.

This time when her climax approached, Apollo merely tightened his grip and held her through the ensuing quakes.

Merely bit her shoulder and let the hot taste of blood push him into coming as well.

Once the white departed his vision, Apollo reluctantly withdrew his teeth from the curve of Percy’s shoulder. He licked at the drops of blood and skin torn in the shape of his canines, feeling a hint of pride at the clear markers of his presence. The abashment at forgetting to numb her skin first combatted it, but failed to suppress the feeling completely.

He nuzzled her neck in silent apology.

She ran her fingers through the sweaty strands of his hair for a few minutes before breaking the hush that had fallen over them. “I think we should get dressed now.”

Yes, they probably ought to.

Apollo didn’t want to, though. He couldn’t deny the apprehension that if he put her down, returned her trousers to her, allowed her to reorder herself into a facsimile of propriety again – then she’d leave.

Percy would walk out the door and he’d never see her again. Not the woman in his arms, not the woman who’d discuss romance novels with him and jump into his arms next to school guide books, not the woman with the unfathomable gaze and an air as if she knew who he really was and loved him.

Not for it.

Not despite it.  

He was.

And she loved him.

“Do you think people often have sex near the school guides?” Apollo blurted out to postpone the moment as long as possible. It wasn't like the answer would change either the past or his determination to repeat the last half hour.

Percy’s dark eyebrows went up in surprise, but after a moment, she answered, “I think so”.

That brought him up short. “Really?”

She nodded. “I’ve certainly done it here before.”

“Really?” Apollo echoed, feeling like a broken record.

(Had it been better than him? Because he didn’t think he’d given the best demonstration of his skill, beset as he was with a chatty manifestation, existential headaches, and the grief-stricken depression of mourning a person yet to die.)

She shrugged. “It's all that pent up tension of knowing you're about to fail. All that pent up frustration of seeing books that claim to help you but which you can't decode. And the hormones wracking your body that you’re too busy to satiate. And suddenly …”

“Sex by the school guides,” Apollo said weakly.

“Sex by the school guides,” she agreed.

They stared at each other before she flexed her legs. “Wanna go again?” she queried politely.

“Yes,” he breathed out fervently.

He’d never pulled out of her, never allowed himself to soften despite coming, never allowed his desperate clutch on her hips to relax.

It gave him ample opportunity to distract himself for the next half an hour from the questions incessantly pounding at the doors he’d locked against common sense and logical thinking.

Who needed reason and rationality when he could be lowering Percy’s legs from his hips, rotating her around, hiking up a thigh for easier access, and thrusting back inside?

Who had time to entertain any pointed comments from his manifestation when he could be listening to the banging of the bookshelf against the wall at its back, the grunts Percy released every time he drove inside, and even the moans spilling from his own mouth as she circled her hips, squeezed her pussy, and pushed back to meet every single one of his thrusts?

He could be focusing on Percy’s fingers pulling at his hair, could be concentrating on the sway of her breasts, could be thinking on anything but the sinking realisation that things were occurring outside of his control.

But all good things came to an end, and so did this bout of sex.    

Just for a moment, Apollo allowed himself to memorise Percy’s panting, the beads of sweat dripping down her neck, the curls coming loose from her coiffure, and above all – the impression of eyes staring into his own through the laminated wood of the bookshelf.

Then he pulled away, and with a pang of disappointment, unpicked the knot he’d tied around her wrists.

She flexed her fingers and rotated her hands, prompting Apollo to take the appendages and massage the delicate wrists.

She leaned against him as he rubbed his thumbs into the depressions between her ulna and radius.

A strange reserve crept through him as the heat of her body warmed his side.

There was no earthly reason why he ought to be rendered silent with shyness.

He’d already been inside her. He’d kissed her, bitten her, bruised her, and fucked her.

But she was looking at him like he was the stars in the sky, the first drop of water after a drought, the flowers around an oasis – like he was everything she’d ever wanted.

He released her hands and summoned clothes for the both of them.

“What about a towel?” Percy asked with exhausted amusement, still letting him soldier half her weight. “Or am I supposed to walk dripping out of here?”

Apollo shrugged. “I could give you a plug, if that’s such a concern.”

She opened her mouth, clearly to ridicule the suggestion, before pausing speculatively.

Apollo pounced on the hesitation. “Want it?” he asked hopefully, hand already glimmering with the silhouette of a vaginal plug.

Hot helium bubbles rose up his chest as he contemplated the prospect of sinking the head of the plug inside her pussy, working her through the widest part, kissing away her gasps as the sudden narrow circumference slipped inside, and then drawing back as he pushed the flared base of the plug flush with her entrance.

Unfortunately, Percy shook her head. “Better not,” she refused regretfully. “With my luck, I’ll get into a fight, get arrested, and then get caught with a plug up my vagina during a strip search.”

Apollo offered a half-hearted smile, more because it was what was expected and less because he felt amused.

The smile became impossible to maintain as she smoothed down the lines of her top before pulling it over her head, tugged her trousers up her legs and then bunched up the fabric around her knees for better functionality, and slipped on the shoes he had no recollection of her ever losing.

“Where do you live?” Apollo burst out, instead of the more hopeful, “Can I drop you off?”

He didn’t wish to come off as a stalker after all.

No, wait … he should have asked the other one.

“With my sister,” Percy answered instead of drawing him a map replete with coordinates, postal code, street name, and the location of the nearest hot dog vendor.

There was nothing cagey about the reply, no hesitation and certainly no avoiding his eyes.

Lie.

He didn't call her out on it. “How's she?”

“Not that great. She’s kind of pregnant, so …” Percy trailed off with a shrug.

Apollo’s brows drew together into a frown. “What’s wrong?”

It wasn't that he cared about this strange creature that Percy couldn't quite claim as a sister. He certainly didn't care enough to don his ObGyn hat again. But the frisson of alarm down his spine was perhaps enough for him to IM Artie.

(He didn't care. At the most, it was a holdover from the days his mother had travelled the world, pregnant without rest. Chased away by everyone who should have offered her succour.)

Percy's eyes widened. “Oh, nothing’s wrong health-wise.”

Good.

It wasn't that he cared. He just didn't see the point of a difficult pregnancy if he could ameliorate it.

He arched his eyebrows in silent inquiry.

Percy shrugged again, though more bashfully. “Well, the guy kind of ran away the moment she got pregnant. She’s working to afford rent and utilities and just plain vitamins. And then there’s me. Another burden.”

Come live with me, then, Apollo almost offered.

Stalker, he reminded himself. Don’t be one. We’re trying to be better.

“You’re not a burden,” he assured her instead. “I’m sure she wouldn’t wish to lose your support.”

The side of her mouth ticked up wryly. “I don’t know about support. From where I’m standing, it seems more like I’m a louse sucking on her blood than anything else.”

“Want to come over to mine?” he asked tremulously. “We could have … lunch. A meal your sister doesn’t have to pay for.”

She burst out into giggles. “Are you offering to be my sugar daddy?”

“Just for a day,” he replied laconically.

She looked up at him, caught sight of the expression on his face, and bent over in half with laughter. “Alright,” she choked out. “Just for today.”

Apollo nodded, even as he sent panicked summons to his swans.

Really, that was one part of being an Olympian most minor gods didn’t seem to understand. It wasn’t a matter of possessing the best gadgets, remembering the most powerful techniques, or getting priority access to the most exclusive locations.

It was about knowing how to utilise everything you did have to the fullest.

Which, occasionally, took the form of begging his swans to please, please, please hurry over with the carriage so he could awe his newest lover and future wife with the car of her dreams, pretty please.

An exasperated trumpet was his only answer.