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“All I’m saying is, it’s pretty inconvenient for every mortal to die at different times. You could save a few trips to their realm if you just, I dunno… have them all die at once? Just, kinda– poof –no more mortals~♡ And then you’ll have more time for other things down here!”
You hear the God of Sleep’s far-too-pleasant voice drifting around one of many opulent, black-limestone hallways that wind within this sunless chasm of the Underworld; hear it just as you turn the bend toward the Hall of Styx. And you should have somehow caught yourself, reeling back; should have twisted round and dashed the way you came upon realizing the Lord of Slumber wasn’t sleeping in that corridor you so foolishly hurried toward. But now it’s too late.
You'd known he'd likely be here, as is his duty, though his duties might not also extend to how he currently lounges side-long on a gilded chaise, his mess of silver curls spilling through his fingers as he props himself up on one elbow, sharp cheekbone lazed upon his idle hand. But your heart freezes to see him here awake, when you'd presumed he wouldn't be–and yet this isn't even the worst discovery upon your being here.
No, the worst part is how, not only is Hypnos here and fully conscious, his twin brother also graces this hall; the God of Death standing just before where Hypnos lay, the broadness of his shoulders turned to where your scurrying’s stumbled to a deafening halt.
Even as your heart seems to burrow into your stomach at the unexpected sight of them, the gold-eyed twins of the Underworld seem unaware of your stagnated presence, and for a moment you consider bolting after all–though the second Hypnos’ half-lidded gaze flickers past his brother to where you’re currently balking, that’s no longer an option. His lazy eyes growing just a fraction more wide, as a jolt of some sort seems to spear right through his middle.
He gasps your name as if surprised to see you here, and he should be; it’s quite late for you to still be running errands for Nyx. Tensing as if to straighten from where he lay, as though your presence requires such a thing, when truly it does not–you’re merely a servant of his mother’s and nothing more; formerly one of those mortals he was just so casually going on about snuffing all the life from. Though, if he were intent to stand in formal greeting, the notion’s distracted by how Thanatos turns across one heavily armored shoulder, following his brother’s gilded gaze to see you hovering there, just beyond the corridor’s bend.
You should quickly bow and leave them before they report this to Mother Nyx, your errant wanderings, but you can’t seem to do a thing, caught as you are in their sunlit, mirrored stares.
“What is it?” Thanatos prompts, straight to business as ever, and of course he thinks you’re here on business too. “Has Mother Nyx some need of her sleep-addled son?” His eyes bitingly crease at the idea. “I suppose he is overdue for her reprimand, if you’ve indeed come to fetch him.”
You most certainly are not here on any of Nyx’s commands. You shouldn’t be here at all. And you inwardly chastise yourself for dashing here so recklessly, though you’ve often little time to yourself between whatever tasks these halls would have of you–you'd sought to make the most of it.
You should have been more cautious on such a fool’s errand. But still, you’d hoped, if hope still exists in death, that you could slip in and out of this hall without attracting anyone’s notice. And though Hypnos’ oddly unnerving stare is bad enough, perhaps Thanatos’ piercing one is presently worse; he’s as likely to chastise you as his mother is for being here without purpose. Sanctioned purpose, anyway.
Your only purpose is your own, and you’re embarrassed to even state it.
Thanatos’ narrowing eyes aren’t exactly inclined to loan you patience the longer you nervously dawdle there.
“Have you forgotten how to speak?” he asks, wryly.
You force a nervous smile you hope conveys the right amount of apology from a mortal to a God. “Forgive me, Master Thanatos; I-I’m not here on your mother’s behalf.”
“Then why are you here?” he wonders, reservedly unchanged as stone. “Come to bathe in the river Styx?”
You’re distracted from immediately answering by the way Hypnos seems to tense where he lie behind his brother; his expression flickeringly lost of its usual, ever-gracious grin.
“I-I wouldn’t…”you stammer, stumbling to recollect yourself at the thought of bathing here, in front of them–and though you suspect he might be joking, with Thanatos you can never tell. “That’s not… no, of course not!”
“Oh leave her alone, Thanatos," Hypnos says, as if sweeping in to save you from your babbling, for which you might’ve been more grateful if his interest didn’t feel to crawl across your skin. "She just came to say ‘hi’ to me, right?” he suggests above your flushing, his half-smirk drawing wide, though he sounds hardly to believe it–oddly hopeful, nonetheless.
Thanatos tuts his tongue, as if far more disbelieving of such a thing than even his brother, seeing as how Hypnos doesn’t exactly boast a sterling reputation for garnering voluntary attention from anyone, even you.
“Should I be concerned you’re so loath to tell me why you’re actually here?” Thanatos asks, his intensity like an executioner’s as he turns to fully face you.
You swallow dryly, quickly discarding the temptation to lie; and in its absence, supposing you must come clean, then.
“I… Well… Truth be told, Master Thanatos…” Oh, just spit it out already; perhaps he’ll be more lenient with you for not wasting his time. “I just… came to pluck one of the flowers Prince Zagreus had strewn here. That’s all.”
A line creases Thanatos’ handsome brow, before he turns a glance at a cluster of those flowers which adorn the pool of Styx–white anemone blooms that somehow never wilt nor fade away even deep inside the Underworld, with no silt nor sunlight to sustain them.
“You’ve come to steal flowers?” he asks. “Whatever for?”
Gods, this is embarrassing, not to mention you could get in a lot of trouble for something so recklessly idiotic on your part.
But, your chambers…
You’re lucky to have your own room, truly–undeserving, even, for one with such a lowly station as you. But there’s little life there. Little life anywhere, within the halls of Hades.
You just wanted something small, something to remind you of the life you once lived.
The idea had seemed harmless, to take a stem at no one’s notice, though now you’re not so sure it really is.
“I just… I think they’re rather lovely,” you murmur, nearly beneath your breath; avoiding both his and his brother’s gazes. “I just wanted one in my room, that’s all. It’s stupid, I know–I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have even considered it, I’ll just–”
You’re already turned to leave–to flee, really–when Hypnos’ outburst stalls you.
“Nonsense! That’s not stupid at all!”
You turn back to see him practically beaming, his lips crooked a fraction higher at one end as he eyes you from where he still lazes. And though his voice holds the sunshine he’s never seen, his eyes, sleep-weighed, stir like molten starlight in a way that makes your chest grow strangely tight.
It’s nerves, you tell yourself–though why you’d be nervous around him, perhaps the kindest of the many Gods here…
You’re being silly.
Especially when he’s being so nice to you. Has always been so kind to you, even if curiously so; continuing, “Now that you mention it, they are sort of pretty.” If there’s something manic in his gaze, it’s gone almost instantly, a quivering flame tamped out. “They match you perfectly,” he adds, a bit more subdued than his original excitement. “You should definitely take one. I insist.”
“They’re not yours to go gifting,” Thanatos curbs him rigidly, glancing back at where he lays.
Hypnos’ ocher gaze flits up to him, his head tilting just so upon his opened palm.
“Oh, c’mon, Thanatos,” he coaxes, locking him in a mischievous, lazy smirk. “It’s harmless~”
“Only as long as I don’t tell anyone,” Thanatos counters, to which Hypnos boyishly grins.
“Exactly!”
Thanatos doesn’t appear amused. Though, eventually, he heaves a sigh.
“Fine, then,” he grumbles, much to your surprise; turning his broad back on you once again. “Go on and take one, if so little can make you happy. And hurry–I’ll not have it heard that I approved nor was witness to any part of this.”
Hypnos’ eyes crease up at his brother. “You’re such a softie, Than.”
“Do you want me to hit you?”
“If you think you actually can~”
It takes you a moment to fully comprehend that you’re not to be chastised–that they’re both actually allowing you to take one of Prince Zagreus’ blooms and, what’s more, they apparently aren’t going to tell Nyx about it–but the very second it sinks in you waste little time in scurrying forward, giving them a bow that nearly has you tripping over yourself with just how anxiously you’d like to get the hell out of here while your luck still stands.
Thanatos’ back isn’t witness to your clumsy venerations, though Hypnos’ amused gaze sheens like half-lidded moons of marigold from where he watches you.
“Th-thank you, my Lords,” you stammer, mustering a smile which Thanatos’ scoff surely doesn’t return, being nearly incapable of smiling as he is. Not that you’d have noticed if he had, regardless; not with how his lazing brother watches you so, with his moonlit head still perched upon one idle hand.
Something about the lazing God, his intensity, holds you momentarily hostage. Draws you into the effervescent gold of him. And for just a moment you stare into his eyes, even from across this hallway, likely longer than is proper, likely longer than you should. Trapped as you are in his half-lidded sunlight, before at last you’re able to tear yourself away again.
You’re lucky he doesn’t call you out on such gaucherie. But he’s always been kind–lenient, even, with you, with your stumblings, with your presence here. Kind, but for his strange fervency and darkly-shadowed eyes. Though perhaps it’s only since you’re new here, having only met your mortal end and risen from the pool of Styx he idles by a mere handful of months ago.
To say you were surprised to rise from the Styx’s blood-like waters after death at all, only to immediately see someone like him staring at you, so bedecked in garnet and gold, with jewel-kissed skin the shade of pale amethyst and who clearly wasn’t human…
You were horribly confused to find yourself there, bewildered beyond description–one moment alive, and the next, you were here, in an Underworld you’d very much doubted all your life even existed.
And yet…
And yet the first thing you did, upon stumbling from those waters which greet the dead, was to awkwardly smile up at him.
You remember it, still. How, for a moment, he’d seemed nearly as tongue-tied as you were. Both of you locked within mutual, twisted, inquisitive stares. Before at last, he seemed to remember himself, his duties in welcoming you and all dead things who wade here.
You shake the memory of it away; holding the delicate skirts of your tunic in one hand as you crouch down on tipped toes to pluck the nearest flower you can, aware of how the fabric of your skirts clings to you only because of the added weight of Sleep and Death's mutual regards upon your back–wanting very much to flee both this hallway and them.
When this impulsive plan had first concocted itself, you’d envisioned taking your time in admiring each bloom, each petal’s beauty in carefully selecting which one to keep with you, plucking whichever most spoke to your heart. But given the circumstances…
You hesitate only a moment before plucking the nearest one you can.
“Thank you,” you say again, turning back to them with a soft, ivory bloom now in hand; and you’re lucky to have it, your heart feels lighter even now. Though your immediate idea to then dash away from them is halted by the way one corner of Thanatos’ lips is barely quirked whilst gazing betwixt you and his twin brother, nearly imperceptible, which is as much of a smile as you’ve ever seen from Death.
“Brother,” he muses, glancing from you to him. “Does your kindness stem simply from the fact you’d planned to let your eyes linger where they shouldn’t across your little friend here whilst her back was turned?”
You cannot possibly comprehend the sort of panic that abruptly wracks Hypnos’ expression.
“What?!” he demands, stealing a jittery glance from him to you–at how your eyes widen in surprise at such a question–before he becomes even more affronted.
“My eyes didn’t– No! No, nonononono, no!” he assures, sitting bolt-right upon his chaise, little curls bouncing. “I’d never even think to do such a thing! Not to a lady like her!”
His eyes pass once more to where you waver, your fingers curling tight around your flower’s stem, and his nerves seem only to heighten. “Like you, I mean,” he amends, addressing you once again by name, “nor any lady, for that matter, not that you aren’t–”
He shakes himself, staring hard once more at his brother. “No! I wouldn’t do that!”
When he forces a smile at you, its shape is somehow frantic. “Don’t worry, little sweetling; nothing to be nervous about~ My brother merely jests.”
“Yes, I’m well known for jesting,” Thanatos blandly muses, before turning his back on the both of you. “Just get back to work, brother. And remember what I told you, or it won’t be me reminding you the next time your work’s found lacking.”
He walks away down the hall, footsteps echoing these lonely chambers, and you’re anxious to follow suit, not wanting to be left alone with Hypnos nor his bubbling kindness nor oddly-silent stares.
The Lord of Sleep, however, seems inclined for you to stay.
“Wait a moment, if you would!” he beckons the very second you attempt to skirt away in the same direction Thanatos disappeared in, as if you actually have a choice at his request. You can’t very well deny him, nor any God who resides here.
Thus, you wait, as instructed. Barely stiffen, before turning back fully to face him, as any son of Nyx requires your full and respectful attention.
“Yes, Lord Hypnos?” you waver. Studying the pale fur which lines the heavy himation draped across his shoulders; the necklet of pure, heavy gold that stretches from the cusp of his angled jaw all the way down below his collarbones; those crimson poppies that lithely adorn his waist–any excuse to study his regal intricacies in lieu of meeting his gaze. “Is there something I might aid you with?”
You sense more than see his smile, reticent as you are, avoidant to meet his face.
“You don’t have to be so shy around me, you know,” he says. Voice soft, its edges a whisper of play. “Nor so formal.”
He sounds genuine enough, though you’re still reluctant to heed him in this, thinking it both risky and unwise to slip into informalities around any of Nyx’s kin.
“Uhm…” you hesitate, reaching across yourself in rubbing at one forearm. Unable not to admire how dark his fingernails appear upon the tapestry of his lavender-moonlit skin. “A-alright, Lord Hypnos,” you stammer at last, even whilst maintaining his proper title.
In the heavy silence which follows, his gaze at last lures yours in. And you see something flicker across his brow, shadowed beneath his ivory curls; a crease which whittles there, that soon smooths itself away again.
After a breath, he pushes himself up from his seat, sweeping his height dexterously downward as he stands in plucking up a handful of anemone in the same, fluid motion of stepping toward you, closing though the distance that keeps you from him, moving as though walking were a dance. So that he’s standing right in front of you, white flowers in his long-fingered hand.
You’re always amazed by how tall he is, when he’s actually standing, as opposed to hovering or lying lackadaisically about. He’s taller than even his brother, and with how close he’s standing to you now, you’re forced to crane your neck just to see his looming, crooked grin and sleepless stare boring ardently into you.
He extends his flower-filled hand, as though in offering.
“Take a few more,” he murmurs down at you, eyes twinkling like sleepless gems, and how a man can look so sleep deprived when half his time's spent napping you'll never know. One corner of his lips cloying upward the longer you’re only able to blink rapidly up at him, something about his proximity causing your head to spin.
“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” he adds with a wink, and something in your belly twists. “Promise~!”
It feels like your heart’s attempting to break out of your chest when at last you force yourself to reach forth and take his offered blooms, for how are you to refuse a gift from the Lord of Slumber? Your fingers inadvertently brushing across the warmth of his in doing so, giving your pulse a little start.
“Th-thank you… Hypnos…” you waver from beneath him; touched, yet oddly wary; the lack of formality he’s requested sounding foreign on your tongue.
Something unspools about him as he studies you. Though the way he never blinks, the way his gaze seems to map you, sends a prickle down your nape; one you’re not entirely sure you’re unfond of, though it’s slightly strange all the same.
“You’re welcome,” at last he smiles, a bit larkish even as his eyes dig into you, like gilded arrows into your soul.
After another few moments that seem to transcend time, his gaze further creases with some form of revelry.
“Well, don’t let me keep you, sweetling,” he says, gaze dancing over yours. “You better run along before someone sees you with all this lovely contraband. You could get in a lot of trouble–and we wouldn’t want that, now would we?”
You swallow thickly, shake your head, unsure if he actually expects an answer. “No, Mast– Hypnos,” you awkwardly correct yourself.
His smile grows, and you feel yourself tense as he leans down closer to your ear.
“Or perhaps you would…?” you hear his cheshire grin.
You wouldn’t–of course you wouldn’t–so you’ve no idea why you can’t immediately say so, why your throat constricts beyond the ability to speak.
He chuckles, his laughter tickling your skin, and then he’s rising once more to his full, impressive height before you.
“Off you go then,” he spurs, with sly eyes and a fox-like curl to his grin.
You don’t immediately obey, as though his eyes alone have wrapped their golden strings around you, keeping you from straying. But at last you succeed in spinning out from under him, walking so swiftly you’re near to sprint. And even as you hasten from the hall of Styx, you feel as if his honeyed eyes never truly leave you; as if they follow even after you’ve turned around the bend.
You’re practically running through the many corridors which follow, and when at last you make it to the door of your modest chambers you turn about one shoulder in ensuring Hypnos isn’t really there, as it feels he is–behind you, watching you–as though a ghost of him still stalks within your wake.
But there’s no one here. No one in this hall. No one save yourself and the dewy, white bouquet that ghost has gifted you.
As oddly struck by him as you were when he presented it, you haven’t actually yet admired his charitable gift. And in your just-assured safety of solitude, you spare a moment to admire it now–its blooms, its softness, its semblance of a life you once lived.
You don’t know why you sped away from him. Hypnos. His company, albeit strange, is almost as lively as these flowers in a place like this. Though something about freely given kindness has always made you wary, as though a person can’t be kind without expecting something in return, without a cost that comes to blindside.
It makes you paranoid, surely. Overcautious to a fault. And yet… you can’t seem to help it. There’s some piece of you distrusting, just as there’s also some strange flit of warmth teased somewhere deep down, sickly strange, even now, at just the thought of him…
You shake yourself from the overcomplications of thought.
Your mind’s too confusing a contradiction to unweave the warring notes of right now, and not anything you’re prepared to think about tonight.
It’s late. Or, at least, without the sun to guide you, you think it is.
So again, you shake thought from you, before at last slipping inside your room, closing the door behind you.
You place Hypnos’ bouquet upon the three-legged table inside your room rather gently, itself tucked away against the wall beyond the furthest edge of your bed; once more admiring its beauty. And as you glance up at the mirror just behind it, you see yourself wearing the fleeting ghost of a smile, like something almost remembered.
You’re swift to wipe it from you.
This day’s stretched overlong.
You just need sleep.
Sleep, and the lack of thought it brings.
Your bed is like royalty to what little you had in life, though compared to the opulence of the Halls of Hades, it’s a simple thing; ebony-carved with modest, silver inlays and sheets of cream.
You slip out of your cornflower tunic, wearing the pale undertunic beneath as you crawl inside your sheets, letting out a strangely tense sigh that does little to allay you. And though you fear your racing thoughts, this unknown confliction, will keep you wide awake for hours merely staring at your marble-veined ceiling, it isn’t long before your lashes flutter as though inexplicably weighed, your gaze too unbearably heavy to focus on anything.
You were scarcely even tired, yet now…
Suddenly, you cannot seem to keep your eyelids open. Nearly the second your breathing settles. One moment you’re awake, and the next, you’re pulled deftly into sleep.
You have no idea how he feels about you, do you?
Not that he can blame you for that.
It’s just….
Isn’t it obvious?
Haven’t you seen him telling you in dreams?
He waits just an hour, warring with himself all the while.
Should he really do this?
Waits, until he’s sure the imperceptible fronds of his influence have cradled your subconscious, have led you deep inside the warm embrace of sleep. And he knows the second you’re dreaming, can feel it, can sense it, as he always does. He’s addicted to swimming across your sleep patterns, every single night; to admiring what dreams he may inspire yet cannot fully see.
He wants you to dream of him.
He always dreams of you, whether or not he wants to.
For what feels like the hundredth time, his heart and mind lay siege before he finally slips from his violet-tinged chambers–its gilded workings, its lavish bed with dusky, starry canopies of falling silk, for Hades’ pride wouldn’t see the God of Slumber sleep anywhere but upon the Underworld’s finest.
He’d been just recently released from his pool-side post, but won’t find sleep tonight, not with how you plague him, not with what he intends to finally do about it.
He’s a shadow in slipping through this unsleeping house; his footsteps so light it’s as though they would fail to leave a mark even against snow. And though he could lead every single person here–every shade, every God–into the very same realm of sleep he’s led you toward, he doesn’t want to draw the attention such an aftermath would surely bring.
No one can know what he’s doing tonight. And he’s quiet enough that, luck willing, no one ever will.
No one suspects him of cunning, and perhaps this is by design. Perhaps he likes it this way, even whilst oddly resenting it, how no one takes him seriously. Perhaps this is how he slips past every God and denizen still awake within this place, beneath the very nose of Hades, with not a single soul witness to his trespass.
He knows exactly where your chambers are. Knows the way by heart. Been tempted toward your door time and time again, whilst you were dreaming, yet never actually dared to slip inside.
Tonight he can no longer resist.
Even as he glances down either side of the vast hallway your room resides upon, he’s apprehensive. Even now, after doubting and resisting and then fully giving in to what he’s about to do, finally folding to ever-clawed temptation, he hesitates, for just a moment, before furtively unlatching your door, silently slipping through it. At long last allowing himself to follow inside your chambers, as he’s always wanted to.
Anxiety makes his heart a drum. And yet he still cannot deny that tensing thrill which pulses through his veins like potent wine, like honey. The secrecy of this, the wrongness of it, and it does feel so wrong to be here like this, without your permission, with you completely unaware as, slowly, as if upon snow, he approaches your sleeping form in bed.
He’d wanted to look about your chambers when first he entered. To breathe in the essence of you, learn more of anything about you, decipher any trace you left behind that made this place your own, your home, you. But now that he sees you here, actually sees you, not just within another of his depthless dreams–your eyes softly closed, your breathing light, yourself the one left dreaming…
He can’t even blink, let alone tear his avidly glowing gaze from you.
Oh, the things he wants to do to you... The things he’s dreamt of. Horrible, delicious things. Things he’s hopefully inspired inside your head, though he only has so much influence on dreams themselves within this chasm of the Underworld…
He shouldn’t do this…
He knows he shouldn’t…
But he can’t help himself.
Even with you so defenseless, lashes soft against your cheeks as you simply lie there in bed, your bed; your bed which smells like you and oh, he wants to swim beneath those sheets with you, wants to smell them, breathe them in, those silken sheets that rob him of the sight of you, trapped within some distant realm of sleep. One he himself, in all his mastery of such things, helps guide you deeper into now, with a fleeting, fluid crouch and whispered words against your ear. Words that bring your near-mortal slumber that much lower, that much deeper. And perhaps he is a bit heavy handed. Perhaps he has sent you deeper than need be. But he won’t risk you waking. Not now. Not like this. He can’t risk it.
He softly inhales your hair, before rising to his full height once again, admiring you from just beside your bed.
You.
Softly, soundly, sleeping.
His at last.
At long, long last.
Serene as an unwaking, delicate vision that’s lost its velvet wings, and Gods he doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve this sight, doesn’t nearly deserve to place his hands on you, and yet…
From where he hovers just beside your sleep, his height cranes ever-so-slightly above where you lay…
How can he resist so ripe a fruit plucked from so vibrant an Olympian garden? One finally within his reach?
He cannot.
He can’t.
He’s waited long enough, pined from the shadows, hungered long enough and he can’t.
But where should he even begin?
He’s not exactly… versed, in such things, as this, all this, any of this.
Perhaps…
Perhaps with just a touch.
The lightest touch.
He’s never… truly, touched you… Never before, and certainly not like this…
The closest he’s come was nearly a fortnight ago, and he remembers it vividly–when you’d bumped into him as you hurried down one of many halls, ignorant of your surroundings in your haste to secure some Nyx-bidden task, and he was secretly glad you had to dash away again soon after, spared as you were from otherwise seeing how even such contact as that had him tensing not to catch your wrists, to pull you nearer; how even your body bumped roughly against his had left him straining in deplorable ways he likely shouldn’t, but he did, he does, for you, always you.
Such touch as that seems hardly worthy to be counted. So he’ll indulge himself, now, in a first, in a touch.
With this in mind, his pulse grows heavy as he dares to run the pad of just one lengthy, death-hued finger along the angle of your jaw, down from your earlobe to your chin. Just the one finger. Just the one touch. And already, he’s so hard he’s aching, the ridge of his cock springing tautly to attention at how hypnotically soft you are, even just your jaw.
Gods, he is pathetic, but even knowing this doesn’t make him able to help it.
And he can never let you see him so. No one can see him like this, so inadequate, just as no one can see you as you are now, as he’s made you–for his eyes only. For only his lips. His tongue. His touch.
All his.
His.
His.
“Little love…” he breathes, so quietly, as though his words might wake you even when he knows nothing will, not until he chooses to release you. His half-lidded gaze alight like flames beneath his lashes as his eyes trace your sleeping face. “You’re so beautiful… I wonder if you know it…” He gently quirks his head, thinking as he studies you. “You never act as though you do… Surely if you did, you’d have drowned like poor Narcissus–I surely would have, if my reflection looked like you. So you must be unaware. Blind, even…”
Featherlight, he traces along your jaw again, withholding a shudder.
“Perhaps my reverence might open your eyes to such things…”
Tucking back your hair behind the shell of your ear, he tells himself he can’t squander this, this singular opportunity he’s stolen for himself, even while knowing full well he may sneak inside your bedchambers again after tonight, that he won’t be able to help himself, that you’re far more addicting than any sin that’s ever killed any man, more decadent than the most honeyed, satin-poured ambrosia.
He’s trembling as he dares to touch you again, only this time he’s more bold. His hand–those lengthy, ashen fingers–wrapping round the edge of your bed-sheets, slowly easing them down your body, unwrapping you like a gift. Hesitant, yet again, at the sight of you tangled within the thin, ivory web of your undertunic, before he’s overcome with need and he has to touch you again.
His slender hand’s cautious, before fully giving in–splaying up your waist, up your stomach, smooth along the lush fabric you’re bathed in, and his heart’s sent racing by the contact, so much that he can scarcely breathe. The tips of his fingers reveling, sensitive as his breath catches high in his throat, and he dares to let his fingers trace up the swell of one of your scantly covered breasts, so gently carried with the subtle rise and fall of your breath.
“Oh–Gods…! ”
The sound of his own breathy keen startles him to awareness–that he’s truly here, it isn’t just a dream–but not enough to make him reconsider what he’s doing, to make him stop, no matter how wrong this is. But he can’t keep making noise, especially noise he isn’t fully aware of. He’s supposed to be quiet. He hasn’t locked your door, he scarcely realizes, and now there’s no way he can pull himself away from you long enough to do so, not even long enough for that.
He has to be quiet.
So as his warm, fervent fingers graze across your nipple, as he swirls his thumb around its peak, feeling it harden beneath the silk of your tunic for him– him, for him–he bites down on his lower lip so harshly it nearly bleeds.
You make a little sound, barely stirring as his thumb continues teasing you, your eyebrows flickered in your sleep, and he nearly cums right then and there, jerking his hand away as if scalded in a desperate bid to restrain himself.
He’s not ready yet–he hasn’t gone through all this trouble just to savor you so fast, without fully admiring, fully tasting.
In truth, perhaps he’ll never be ready for this moment he’s dreamt of to end; content with merely touching you forever, memorizing, growing intimate with your shape–every hollow, every curve. And for a moment, he’s lost of all reason; considering if he could keep you asleep like this forever, forever his, all his, every ravishing inch. Though he’s rather swift to shake away such foolishness.
He wouldn’t keep you like this. Such a thing is unforgivable. What’s more, he doesn’t actually want to.
He adores the warmth of your smile too much for that. Wouldn’t see himself robbed of it, not even by his own, incessant hands.
Your smile…
He sees it now–your smile, like an exquisite scar branded upon his mind–as his lust-burned fingers tingle and he hesitates to touch you again, and how can such a thing beguile him so? How can such a simplicity hold him so inexplicably charmed? He's never fallen inside anyone else's smile before, yet yours holds a power he cannot fathom.
He’s not sure what love is, if a God or an incarnate can truly love in the same way humans do, but he thinks he loves you, thinks Aphrodite herself somehow struck him here from so very far away, her arrow breaching an Underworld she’s never visited–that she still somehow pierced him the second he first saw you, was first warmed by your smile.
Surely, that is love, though not the kind he’d ever dream that you’d reciprocate.
He won’t risk it, in any case.
He’s seen the way you look at him.
The nerves. The near-recoils…
If you rejected him…
A hollow within his ribcage aches.
No, he’ll settle for this. This secret, forbidden intimacy…
You’re his, if only just like this. His. And he sheds each layer of his nervous hesitations away.
Restraint and adoration makes him gentle– timid, even–as his lissome hand inches toward you once more. As he grazes his thumb across your mouth, your lips; those lips so sensually soft beneath your steady, unconscious breathing; that breath which warms his skin.
The softness of your mouth electrifies him, pulls him like a light through a storm and he’s torn past even the ability to second-guess himself any longer. Driven only by need as his thumb presses past your lips, inside the heat of your mouth, and the second your tongue wets his skin his pupils blow wide, nearly masking the gold of his iris’ in hungry darkness.
Is this what heaven feels like? That land of the Olympians? No wonder they never come down from it. And neither shall he, now that he knows what he's been missing.
He pushes in further, the pad of his thumb stroking back along the slickness of your tongue till his palm is wet with spittle and his blunt nail teases the edge of your throat. Some unknown, burning instinct compelling him forward even then until, even clasped within dreams as you are, you still gag against his intrusion, lightly choking as your brow forms a crease. And the sensation of that –the sound of it, the little tremor which carries through you into his tensing forearm as your throat bobs and shudders and constricts whilst you unconsciously try to expel him–
He’s forced to rip his hand from you again, even as his shoulders clench as if to keep him there inside you, the lithe cords of muscle in his neck seizing; his wide, golden eyes never leaving you, not long enough to even blink lest he lose one fracture of his seeing you like this.
You cough softly only once before settling, your fluttering lashes never fully opening as you’re once again pulled inside the darkest realm of sleep. And Hypnos is left to stare with a manic fascination, to lift his spit-slicked thumb and lave his own tongue where yours had once been, licking the sweetness of you off him, watching you all the while as though you’re a meal he'd rather be tonguing, would rather sink his teeth in.
Perhaps he should. Perhaps he will. Sink his teeth inside you. Leave a mark where you won’t ever see it, but he’ll know it’s there, and he knows you’ll feel it.
His cock twitches near-painfully beneath his rubied chiton, the loose fabric somehow feeling uncomfortably tight as he bites his lip again to keep from biting you.
His heart’s beating so fast, it’s a miracle you can’t hear it–he’s not sure how much more of this he can take, and he hasn’t even done anything yet–hasn’t slipped you from your clothes as he swore to himself he would, no longer content with vague imaginings of what rapture lie beneath. He’s been so patient, time and time again not tearing into you, but now he’s aching to see you bared, for his hands to roam your curves, your naked skin. How does anyone succeed in such things without prematurely breaking? How does any man strive through such torment?
Perhaps… perhaps he’s being too slow with this. Too delicate.
You’re asleep, after all…
Unaware…
His…
He should be rougher. More demanding in what he wants, what he needs, if he means to fully indulge himself. It's not as though you'll know. As if you can stop him.
The depravity of it somehow wrests a shiver through him.
It's harmless, really, to satiate these cravings you’ve etched inside him.
You don’t have to know.
And he’ll always, always remember…
His heart leaps into his throat as, for a moment, reality once more strikes him like a fist–the reality that he’s defiling you without your ever knowing, though it’s still not enough to stop him. Still lowering one knee upon the bed just beside your waist, watching you as though his ribcage will shatter should he dare to look away. Memorizing every contour of your face as he slowly crawls in atop you; one lanky knee on either side of your sleeping hips, each spilled free from the rucked-up, ruby length of his chiton; his large palms pressed flat on either of your slender shoulders beneath the relative broadness of his, his weight indenting the bed.
He’s right above you, moonlight curls dangling down his brow, his angled cheeks, and he’s never seen anything more beautiful than you do right now within his shadow, than you do beneath him, your waist below the hovering of his, so near to him.
It’s intoxicating, and yet nothing ever feels near to you enough, not even this.
Beyond worshiping your naked skin, beyond sneaking inside your chambers in the first place… he hasn’t had much of an iron plan in what might happen behind the illicit privacy of your door. Driven instead by need, by instinct, by urgings, all without a proper name. Though as he admires you like this, from beneath his heavy, sleepless lashes–lashes which grow even more weighted as his breath slows and his stomach tightens–more and more he knows exactly what he wants, what he won’t leave this place without having.
Your mouth, your cunt, every sacred place inside you; he’d fill every warmth his heat can spill inside of, every place he might claim you.
Only then will he be near enough, and still his thirst for you may never sate no matter how deeply he drinks of you. But even if he’s quenched for just a time, a moment; even that would be a boon in a world otherwise consumed, drouthy, starving.
He lowers his weight upon one forearm beside your head, his thumb stroking along your cheek as his gilded eyes pass over the way yours fail to open, even though some part of him wants them to. Not noticing how his face draws closer to yours, sinks lower; not until he’s kissing you.
He just wants a taste, he tells himself. He knows it’s not truly a kiss if you cannot kiss him back, but still his tongue slips inside your mouth, along your own; coiling, tangling, as his breath becomes taut and uneven.
His tongue curled so slickly around your own, possessive as he swallows down your soft and sleepy exhales–it’s a decadence, a thing he could drown in, and he does–kissing you more deeply, melding his lips to yours; nipping, sucking, tugging your lower lip taut before his tongue dives after yours again.
Thumb dragged against your cheek, his other hand slips down along the curve of your waist as he kisses you, slender digits snaking round, urgent beneath the small of your waist before he even realizes that he’s pulling you up against him; cock surging at the contact as your waist bumps up against his.
A small groan unravels from his chest, tangles with his kiss as his hand, his yearning hand, drags back around your front. Blunted, blackened nails sinking down along your stomach, your thigh, as fingers coil within your undertunic, dragging it up your naked skin. Slow at first, then more insistent. Anticipation trembling as he drags the fabric up your legs, your stomach, your hips; unweaves its threadbare cover from your breasts, allowing their curves to spill into the night with such a softness it makes his gut clench, with such perfection he cannot grasp.
He only frees his mouth from yours long enough to tear your undertunic fully up and off you; kissing you even more fiercely the second it’s gone. Lost inside the tangling of your tongues, before the sight of you in naught but your scant subligaria distracts his ruddy lips from yours, lures his heated gaze downward to drink the sight of you in.
What a masterpiece you are. The gentle curve of your shoulders, the subtle swell of your hips. Your stomach… Your breasts…
The air’s chill prickles your skin, tightening your nipples beneath him, and his golden eyes draw toward them like moth to flame.
Surely nothing is so perfect…
He has to find out for himself.
Has to taste you.
Muscles tensing, he eases himself down the length of your sleeping body, his breath hot along your neck, hungry across one of your collarbones as he tastes its naked ridge; tonguing, nipping, biting on his journey down between your breasts, for not an inch of skin can go untasted.
When his eager tongue barely grazes the stiffness of one of your nipples, his groan is swiftly masked against your plushness as he doesn’t hesitate to suck your nipple fully inside his mouth, rolling the flat of his tongue hungrily along its peak; flicking, circling, savoring, scraping you with his teeth as his breath grows haggard.
One hand cinches around your nape, while his other steals up the warm curve of your side, desperate to feel you. Pinching and pawing and kneading your other breast as though you belong to him, all while he moans and sucks your nipple to a swollen peak.
Your nipple’s wet and puckered by the time he manages to pull away from you, and a trail of spittle trickles like diamond down his chin, a slick ribbon that ties you to him, only snapping as he wipes his chin haphazardly on the back of his pallid forearm, the gold of his armband grazed across his wet lips. His amber eyes never leaving you as he sits upright, straddles you, stares down with longing so consuming it hurts.
“Do you have any idea how delectable you taste…?” he wonders aloud, knowing full well you can’t respond, can’t even hear him. One hand sliding possessively up along your throat, his thumb resting in its hollow.
His eyes pass over the un-opening of yours, in search of answers you aren’t inclined to give him in sleep.
“You… How were you a mere mortal? Surely such beauty is divine, and yet…”
The heated pad of his thumb traces along your throat’s shape, up along your jaw, your beating pulse as he watches you from beneath his heavy lashes; his intensity burning, mesmeric.
“You must have slipped through the cracks of godhood… How lucky for me.” He barely smiles, too caught within the shape of your lips, his thumb slipped up to trace them. “I shouldn’t delight in such misfortune, but how can I not, when it’s brought you here? Brought you to me…?”
Lowering himself over you again, his brow rests heavy upon yours as his eyes eat hungrily down the length of you, near-glowing and honed with a huntsman’s intensity as his dark-nailed thumb hooks around the waistband of your subligaria, slowly dragging the only fabric keeping him from you downward at one hip.
The second the ridge of your hip’s exposed, his breath tightens in his chest. And as your undergarment’s dragged slowly down your thighs, past the heaven between your legs…
A small moan shudders through him, helpless to it, as at last your body's fully bared to him, and it’s so much better than he’s endlessly imagined.
His pupils shrink to pinpricks as he resists the dire urge to sink his tongue between your legs. Coaxing his palm and lengthy fingers there, instead, and Gods… your garment’s left abandoned, left tangled around your knees as his hand steals roughly up the inside of your thigh.
Another groan contorts within his chest with how he tries to mask it, though he scarcely can, not with how exquisitely your folds find his fingertips, how warm and satin-smooth, how your softness envelopes even his lightest touches like heated silk.
He’s inexperienced in such things–the tapestry of a woman. But he’s eager to learn, desperate to explore and discover everything, especially about you. And as his long middle finger eases through your folds, finds the delicate nub of your clit as conquest curls through your slickness, the little flinch your brow makes, the smallest flutter of your lashes somehow tells him to keep going, to keep massaging there, right there…
His breathing shudders as he watches your expression flicker more and more even within the grasp of sleep; as he watches so intently it’s as though he fears you’re made of glass and all of you might suddenly shatter should he do this incorrectly, and yet his restraint and nerves slip more and more away as your breathing becomes shallow, more and more the longer the pads of his fingers circle your little nub; as your brows knit and your folds grow slick…
Oh, Gods… You’re… You’re getting so wet for him… He must be doing this right…
“H-how are you so perfect…” he whimpers at your lips, and he can’t help himself; he trades his fingers for his thumb, needing to be inside you, to spear his middle and fore fingers as deep as he possibly can.
Even desperate to sink inside you, it still takes him several moments to find where he might sheath himself inside. And though it seems a shame to stretch you open on his hand rather than on his needy, weeping cock still trapped beneath his clothing, he seems unable to bring himself to stop–the pads of his fingers roaming between your labia, stroking and mapping and teasing with pressure until, at last, he’s found your entrance. At last, his two, obsessive fingers slip just a fraction inside, only to their first knuckles, and already he feels your walls clenching around the intrusion in the most intoxicating way.
His brows cinch above yours as he bites back a moan that dies deep within his throat, exhaled as a shaky whimper, the sound a shuddering exhale through his nose as he bites his lips closed in desperately trying to restrain himself, to ignore how painfully hard his cock becomes at the sensation of you squeezing round his fingers. And just for a moment, he wishes so badly that your eyes would open–that he could see how your pupils might blow just as wide as his as he sinks himself deeper inside you, his cock aching to take his urgent fingers’ place.
The way your cunt grips him, the way your slickness drags up and down as he withdraws, then thrusts in again, deeper, again, deeper –how he doesn’t absolutely shatter is beyond his ability to think. Yet even while he’s straining to ignore the agonizing need seizing through him, the unsure tempo of his fingers becomes even more greedy, desperate for more of you, your heat, your unguarded reactions. And as your lips fall open and you exhale the sweetest little noise he’s ever heard, he swears his vision blurs before his mouth crashes into yours, moaning against your tongue in return.
Gods, you must like this, you must like this, and fuck he likes it too, the world could fall away with him inside you…
Your walls flutter tight, so tight, like they’re begging him for more, and he’s desperate to give it to you. Thrusting faster with every urgent flex of his forearm, every tightened flick of his wrist as his fingers stretch you open, and at last he seems to master how the pad of his thumb strokes in slow, incessant circles around your clit–surely he must have, with how your spine almost arches–mindlessly, unconsciously–up against his palm at the apex of every thrust that has his fingers buried fully inside you, so deep and yet he longs to be deeper. Dexterous digits curling in a way that has your shallow breath catching each time he seems to do it just right. So much that, for a moment, he even fears he might be hurting you, afraid those little twists in your expression might be pain instead of pleasure when the two are so alike, but even then he can’t stop himself, you’re so wet and he swears your legs are trembling and there’s not a God alive who could steal away the sight of you like this, the feel of you, like this, just like this.
You exhale a trembled little sound again against his starving lips, and he’s mewling, drowning as he’s forced to pull away, to jerk his sopping hand from between your quivering legs; the heady amber of his gaze stretched tight with how close he is to breaking.
H-he’s not going to last like this–he wants to watch those little twists in your expression forever, hear those sweet, incessant sounds you make until the world of mortal's burns, but he can’t–!
Desperately, unblinking as he watches those little spasms that still wrack your otherwise restful face, he fumbles at his waist in rucking up the ruby fabric of his chiton, shakily fisting his eager cock that’s already far too sensitive to even his own touch, swollen and flushed a deep-plum and needy.
You exhale a small whine that makes his lungs constrict, that has his cock twitching painfully against his palm; your sleeping face momentarily more constricted as if at this sudden lack of him, as though you need him, are just as impatient as he, and he grabs your subligaria still tied around your knees in a show of such impatience, tearing the scant fabric down and off you. One heavy knee nudged between your legs in coaxing your thighs further apart for him, revealing all of you in the shamelessness of sleep, so beautiful and all his.
Leaning down over you again, his brow touches yours, one hand grasped beneath your jaw beside how his elbow indents the bed, his fisted cock angled between your legs.
He’s nervous–hoping he does this right, that he’s not too big for you–you felt so tight around even just his fingers, so how in any hell is his girth supposed to slip inside?
In his hesitance, his thumb steals forth to drag along your kiss-plushed lower lip, and just how easily your mouth molds to his whims… it has him mesmerized. Has him salivating. Has him momentarily lost, before that needy cinch of pleasure biting at the edge of his spine urges him forward, to slide the flushed head of his cock along your slickened folds.
“F-ffuck…”
He’s barely intelligible as already pleasure squeezes through his veins, drags him toward an edge he can’t come back from, makes him weak for even trying. And he can’t stop himself from pushing past your folds, the darkly swollen head of his length dragging from your clit to your entrance as he moans at the exquisite warmth of you closing in around him, even just around his tip, all his nerves shaved raw until there’s nothing left but need, so overwhelming he swears his spine will break if he doesn’t rut inside of you right now.
He should likely take things slow lest he hurt you, you’re so much smaller than he imagined, but he can’t think–his sleep-shadowed eyes squeezing shut as his hips flex desperately forward, and even blinded by urgency he only manages to thrust inside to half-length with just how tightly your walls resist him, and oh, Gods, this– h-he’s–he cant–he's so consumed by how slickly you sheath him that he's barely able to muffle a low, elongated moan against your shoulder, mewling as he fights to restrain himself from rutting into you even more forcefully, from stretching you past what limit you can take, from being too harsh with someone so soft but he, he needs you, you feel too fucking good around his cock like this and he–
He gasps against the naked warmth of your shoulder as his cock eases out of your snug walls by just an inch, your slickness coating his length, before he slams back in again, not quite bottoming out and yet it's still nearly enough to send him crashing over an unforgiving ledge with how perfect you feel. His teeth raking your skin, sinking in as he bites a strangled moan against your shoulder just to keep himself from cumming inside you on barely the second stroke.
The taste of copper melds with sin, hot against his panting lips, against your salted skin, which for a moment he's too consumed to notice. Not until after hazy, melting seconds does he realize he's made your shoulder bleed; given an uncomfortable, electrified start at the fact he’s marred your lovely skin, when he truly never wanted to hurt you. And his tongue laves across the wound–frantic, possessive, apologetic–even while his cock drags slowly from your warmth, thrusting feverishly back in again.
He thinks he must be cursing against your shoulder, whimpering against your skin as he tongues it, before he forces his hips to slow with his length speared fully in you, forces his glowing eyes to steal a glance at the way your cunt envelops him, committing it to memory, and Gods the image should be immortalized, your swollen lips swallowing his straining girth like this, wrapping round his length like a lover.
His midnight-painted thumb slides along the apex of your parted thigh, up along your labia in coaxing it more to the side so he can truly see how well you’re taking him, gripping him as he slides back out by just an inch, slowly pushing back in again, and fuck– fuck–!
His body crumbles atop yours as the tension coiled in his belly becomes damning, overtaking him, enslaving him; his hand on your hip, dark nails digging into your curves like claws upon prey as his other hand cinches round your throat, collaring you just as gold collars him; long fingers squeezing just as tightly your cunt squeezes him.
He lungs are ravaged, breathing in gasps and trembles as he licks inside your mouth, kissing you fiercely even when you can’t kiss him back; moaning between your frantically tangled tongues as his hips slam into your curves at an unrelenting pace, filling you up so harshly he fears you might break but he doesn’t care, can’t care, can’t think, you feel perfect, you’re so perfect, so, so perfect–
Some single, impossible string keeps him from snapping; acting on pure instinct alone in dragging his night-etched thumb along your clit again; stroking slick, unfocused pressure that he swears has you squeezing his assailing cock even more, has your toes curling in the sheets, has your eyebrows cinched just as tightly as his are as his forehead hangs heavy atop yours.
Wet slaps fill the room each time his hips slam relentlessly into you, his breathing tight, his vision hazy–and yet above it all he still hears with such clarity the small and broken and desperate little sound you make as suddenly your walls convulse in waves around him, so tight you nearly force him out; your unconscious body trembling as your expression twists, your brows knitting, your lips falling slack as you seem to struggle just to breathe.
His eyes pop wide in that fraction of time he realizes you’re cumming, before he’s forced to mute his cries against your shoulder, groaning too erratically to even tongue or bite your skin as his parted lips merely drag and pleasure robs him of everything.
“Fu-fuhh, aah–ff-fuhc–uck–nnh!”
Broken moans escape him at the apex of every desperate, haggard thrust as he erratically pumps you full, each gasp hot against your skin as he ruts inside you even more harshly, uncontrollably as all pleasure in him snaps and with a strangled groan his cock surges hard, spasms deep inside you, throbbing as he spills himself in wave after wave, gruff and urgent and desperate with every spasm of molten rapture seizing through him, hips slamming at a feverish tempo until cum slicks out along his length, melting down your skin, dripping on the bed.
He’s a sweaty, shivering mess by the time his desperate hips at last begin to slow, and he hasn’t realized just how loudly he’s been moaning your name, not until the world comes slowly back in focus around what feels like only you and him, till he can barely hear and see again.
When every drop of pleasure’s spent, he nearly collapses atop you, just barely held from crushing you beneath him by one weakly propped forearm and gruffly angled knee.
One might think he’d been drowning, such is the ragged state of him. And after staring down at you in disbelief of what he’s done, that anything could feel so good, he kisses your gently parted lips, your flinching brow, your wounded shoulder; licking blood from you as though it’s honey from your skin, admiring the mark he shouldn’t have left you, that will undoubtedly raise questions when you see it, but for now… For now, he’s glad he has it, has this; a sigil that this actually happened, a memory of what you won’t remember, of this moment you were his.
Perhaps…
Perhaps, next time, he could…
No.
No, he can never let you wake whilst he does this, if he does indeed ever do this again.
Oh, but the urge to…
What might your eyes look like, your waking expression, were you fully conscious as he made you cum…?
He made you cum…
He can still hardly believe it, and he gently cups your face as his lips gently claim you, gently kiss you.
Your breath’s still a little uneven, your chest rising and falling in short and shallow beats, your pulse skipping beneath his thumb upon your throat. But you’re sleeping. Even now, sleeping.
He was, indeed, heavy handed in ensuring it.
The fact you won’t remember this…
It had started so exciting. An illicit, secret thing.
But now…
His brows tug into a wistful crease as he studies your sleeping perfection beneath him.
Now, it’s just a blade between his ribs.
Now it only pains him.
This must be what dying feels like. This… undefined agony, burning from somewhere deep within. And suddenly he feels more sympathy for all those mortals he welcomes here, for how they’re all so prone to dying all the time, in all sorts of awful ways–though at least they only usually have to just the once.
Dying must feel differently to mortals than to Gods, who can die endlessly, and yet Hypnos never has.
What must it have felt like when you died?
Can he somehow ease that pain, if still you feel it?
Could he somehow make it go away?
He’d like to try.
If you’d let him.
But, of course…
He sighs, his ember eyes traced with longing across your lips; your sleeping, weighted lashes.
You likely wouldn’t.
You’d perhaps prefer to avoid him.
Though perhaps he could still attempt it.
To ease what pain you might’ve felt. Might still feel, even now.
He could lie like this beside you forever, admiring your beauty, basking in your warmth; even this warmth he’s stolen, that you’ve only given him in dreams. Though, eventually, he knows he must leave you, even if he’d love nothing more than to sleep with you in his arms. For even late an hour as it is, he’s still due back to his post again sooner rather than later, and his lack of presence at the Styx won’t go unnoticed.
He can’t imagine what he’d say if Thanatos or, Gods forbid, Mother Nyx came looking for him, found him here, with you, like this…
The nightmare potentiality of that at last spurs him from how he’d endlessly laze beside you.
He dresses himself rather brusquely, sparing patience for you–gently cleaning you as best he can, re-clothes you as though with reverence. And his heart swells warm against his ribs as he cradles you so softly back inside your covers, placing a gentle kiss upon your brow as he tucks you back in bed.
“Sweet dreams, my little love,” he breathes against your cheek, admiring you a moment more with sleepless, glowing eyes, before at last tearing himself away from you. Leaving you with just a mark and naught a memory of his ever being here.