Work Text:
When her husband betrays her, Persephone goes where she always goes for comfort: to the bottle.
Hermes pours for her silently in a bar that is still dusty from disuse; she'd never bothered to unpack after she'd come back down. She'd been busy. She'd been fighting with her man, ignored him out of spit in as much as was possible in a mansion six feet under, way down hell-town, and not let him forget her annoyance.
And now they were here, and now she hated that they were here.
"Another?" Hermes asks.
"Another," she says. "Keep'em coming."
Hermes nods, and dies; he pours for her, and then pours again.
"You wanna talk about it?" he asks.
"No, I surely do not," she says with a snarl. Hermes pours another without her asking, then pours another when she finishes the first. She thinks about her husband, about the loosening of his tie, and in lieu of crying, she opts to get drunker still. She gets drunk enough that she can dance in her seat, drunk enough that she can scream out wildly and demand worship from the ghosts of the miners and the millers and everyone else trapped down in this hell with her and with him, forever and ever, evermore.
She could sing, but her hand clenches on the little tin cup that Hermes is so generously pouring into instead. And not a word passes her songbird lips.
Thinking about her husband, she doesn't feel so much about singing. She feels a lot like strangling. Yes, that sounds like an awfully good idea.
"You look like you have murder on your mind," Hermes hums. He isn't judging her, because Hermes is a good friend and Hermes knows where all her bodies are buried, though to this point the bodies have only been metaphorical.
"Somewhat," she admits. "Just give me the bottle."
He whistles but does as she asks. Lets her get pretty deep into the bottle before he dares to speak again. "He's done a bad turn to you, he has. I'm sorry."
"Not your fucking fault, Hermes." It is not the first time that Hades has pressed so hard on her nerves she has thought of garroting him just to shut him up. It is, however, the first time that she hasn't wanted to kiss him at the same time.
Mostly.
"I know," he says. "Still ain't pleasant."
"No, it surely isn't." She sips again from the bottle, now half-empty; feels little more than warmth from the taste. Damn divine liver! It is functioning far too efficiently for her taste. All she feels is buzzed and pissed.
Not the best combination.
She drinks some more. And instead of singing and dancing and begging for worship, well, the longer she drinks, the better another idea seems to be: confrontation.
"I'm gonna go in there," she says.
Hermes looks at her, sharp. "You sure you wanna do that? There's things you can't--"
"You think his ass is anything I haven't seen? That my imagination ain't good enough at thinking about it?" Hermes winces.
"I'm just saying, give you both time to calm down--"
"I do not need to calm down!" She shouts, sounding loud enough that the walls of the bar shake. Hermes looks up at her, a bit startled; she winces. He hasn't done anything wrong. She needs to take this anger and act on it - act on it in the man's office, with the man who deserved it.
Not take it out on Hermes, who did not.
"You're a peach," she says, softly. She leans up on the bar, kisses d him softly on the cheek. "Thanks, Hermes."
"You sure you--?" He starts, but the man thinks better of it - wisely. "Safe trails, sister. Don't do anything that I'll have to haul you upstairs for."
She rolls her eyes; Zeus couldn't say shit to condemn Hades and she knew anything that if anything went to that level, it would be her that would get shoved down. Justice wasn't something that ever went towards people like her.
"Trust me, I know my boundaries. I may not be a canary, but I've felt the walls of the cage."
She stomps off after that, and she doesn't look back to see Hermes' reaction. Nor did he say a word, and, truly, that is just as well. Anything he says would be gearing her back on the path of singing and dancing and praise and desperation.
And right now she has the desperation, but what she is desperate for is bashing her husband's brain in with his own letter-opener, and such is not anything Hermes is going to encourage her doing.
She walks through his hell town on unsteady legs, clutching the bottle like it is her personal rosary for half the length of the town until it falls from her hands and shatters, paining the stone ground dark-brown. Dirt-colored dirt, she thinks, and laughs hysterically at a joke that ain't funny. She hit the stairs to his office -- these fucking stairs, he had to have curved stairs, as if they ever wanted for space, the fucking bastard. She laughs and mutters and almost -- almost -- cries as she gets up those steps. Twice she hesitates, stopping on the steps, and wondering if maybe it would be better to go back to Hermes, to suck it up and pout it out and come back when she isn't three times as drunk as a skunk.
But then, being as drunk as she is, she opts to say: fuck it. He deserves her at her angriest. He deserves to know how he is hurting her.
He deserves far more violence than she had in her heart to do to him, but screaming -- screaming, she could do.
She walks up to the door on unsteady legs, leaning against it. Mother, give me strength, she thinks; of course, mother nature has never much liked her husband and would be all too happy for her daughter to channel her power. But it is doubtful that she could hear her; not many prayers down here tend to leak up into the world out there, her husband being a most sad miser who keeps nearly all such prayers to himself.
Then, after a moment of gathering herself, she takes her boot, and she kicks at the lock of his door, hard. She knows it will give and is pleased when it does; least something down here still respects her.
"What?" says the songbird; she hears her before she sees her and can not help but feel traitorous relief in her heart when she does; the girl is still, by some miracle, clothed. So is her husband. Was I being foolish? she wonders. There is no answer.
Her husband, for his part, simply raises one brow.
"Hello," he acknowledges. He looks more pleased to see her than she would have thought he would be. "Can I help you?"
"You fucking bastard," she says, and it seems not loud enough. The little songbird girl -- she thinks back, tried to pull her name, got it, Eurydice, her name is like a melody -- pales, and clutches the papers in her hand tighter. "YOU FUCKING BASTARD!" She screams, feeling the moment needed more gravitas.
"Excuse my wife," he says to the girl, smooth as satin and just as cheap. "She's had a bit to drink."
"Your wife?" She sayswith a whisper; Persephone arches her own brow.
"Yes, his wife." She grinds out. She wants to insult the girl but does not; her fight is not with her. "His holy and most eternal wife."
"When she decides she wish to be," he says. He leans back in his chair, holds a drink in his hand that she has not noticed until this point that he has been sipping upon. Bastard. Not fit enough to make a mockery of her in public, now he's going and stealing her good hooch too. She glaresat him. He salutes her with his drink in his hand, the effect nothing but mocking.
"Maybe right now I don't wish to be." She hisses; he waves his hand, pust on a brave show. The slight frown as he drops his gaze a second later tells her the brave show is probably a front. "Maybe I'll go find someone else," she says; he snorts. "Someone who ain't parading around little desperate girls hungry for just a scrap of bone."
"You wouldn't," he says. She ignores him and watches the girl instead, who is holding the contract he'd given her so tightly in her hand that Persephone thinks the paper is liable to rip in twain if she opts to grip any tighter.
She sits down on the edge of his desk with her back to him, focuses on the girl. Divide and conquer, ain't that how he always works?
"Are you scared, love?" She asks, gentle-like. Hades bristled behind her; he did not like to think of himself as being such a scary fellow. She knew for him that to highlight such was to play into a rather low point for himself: he'd never quite forgiven all the little waifs and nymphs he'd chased before her who ran off because he had the stink of death on him. That sort of thing never washed off. "I promise, girlie, I'll not let him harm you."
"I just want a job," said Eurydice. Unsaid but still noticed in the pout of those lips: I would do anything to do it, too, yes-sir-ee.
"Girl wants to work," said Hades. He flipped some papers on his desk, trying not to be obvious about what he has done, though this of course, only renders him more obvious to the woman. "There's no harm in that."
Persephone grabs the girl's cheek and tilts her forward; the girl stares back, all hot-eyes and just a slight sliver of fear.
"If I offered you 500 dollars to kiss me, would you take it?" She asks; the girl is pretty enough, and she likes the idea of ruining his fun like this, by playing with his little chew toy before he can so much as sink his teeth into her.
"What? Ma'am, I -- are you serious?" It's not much money at all but she sees the way the girl's eyes catch, the way she thinks: such is an awful lot of money. Such could pay my way to many places. Such could buy a lot of food for the winter.
At the same time, Hades goes "What?" in a dimly croaking voice, and both of them hear him, and both of them elect to ignore him, just the same.
"Serious as sugar, sweet cheeks." The girl is out of her seat in seconds, and she is half climbing up Persephone before she can so much as get up herself. She manages, though, falling into a twist of limbs that leaves them both a bit off their feet.
"Come now--" Hades says, but neither of them pays him much mind. Money in your pocket now is worth a job in a few hours.
"Isn't she so pretty?" Persephone turns toward her husband, intent on forcing him to write the girl a big check by the time this demonstration is true. He doesn't answer, because the man has a modicum of sense and knows that Persephone will garrote him if he answers in the affirmative. He would not have brought her down here had she answered in the negative.
In lieu of answering, he just grips the sides of his seat. She smirks at him once, then lays it on the girl.
She makes it a good kiss; good enough that she hears her husband's sharp intake of breath. She's gentle with Eurydice: maybe Hades likes to think she's only ever just kissed him, but truth is, Persephone spends an awful lot of her youth puckering up with a whole mess of naiads and dryads and other frolicking nymphs and truth is too that Persephone is a great kisser, and kissing with women's a familiar ground. She brushes the girl's lower lip and is pleased to see she's selling it: she gives Persephone entrance, lets her kiss her good and deep, and gets a bit of tongue in there.
Hades makes a noise in the back of his throat that is -- not painful. She doesn't pull apart, keeps kissing Eurydice again, who is soft and lovely and obliging. She rubs her nose against the girl as she finally parts before turning her eyes back to him.
"She tastes sweet, if you were wondering."
"Persephone--" His voice is unsure; she hasn't involved a third in their relationship and he's not entirely sure what's going on here. That makes two of them. "I'll write you a check," she purrs to Eurydice, but doesn't leave her arms. She just fawns there over Eurydice, expecting him to fume, to throw Eurydice out and maybe Persephone too (and she could handle this, she thinks, because she would not mind him being miserable so long as he was miserable alone). But when she looks back at him, well, what she sees is not fear, or anger, or even frustration.
What she sees in those eyes is desire.
She wonders how far she can press that, how much he'll allow her to do before his jealousy (always surefire to flare up, a bet so certain no bookie would take it) makes him storm up, show her how much he loves her, and only her. She throws an arm over Eurydice and leans in, going for a second kiss. Eurydice doesn't just let her; she leans in, lets her not just kiss her but fully make out with her: the woman's lips part, and Persephone dives in.
"Persephone..." He mumbles again; he has lost track of the plot. She runs a hand down the girl's side, gently presses one hand upon her breast. It's small, but tender and pleasing, and the girl makes a groan in the back of her throat that gets even Persephone a bit fired up.
She pulls the girl in front of her, fit on making Hades' little puppet a show. "I'll up the pay if you follow along," she whispers into her ear, then bites down on that ear. She grips the girl's breast in front of him and watches her husband's response carefully: he flares his nose.
"You want this job?" She breathes into the girl's ear.
"Yes," she whispers. Eurydice leans back and plants a big kiss on her, and she sees why the girl gets the name is like a melody rap because the girl is sweet as sugar itself when it comes to her kissing. Her lips are soft and well experienced; she brushes her upper teeth against Persephone's lower lip, and Persephone wonders if she's perceived that she and her husband like it rough.
"Oh, I see why you wanted her," she growls. "I want her too. That okay?"
He doesn't answer. He is looking at her with something damn near approaching awe in his eyes. He has not stood yet, and she wonders if said husband is having a hard time standing. Blood rushing to places tends to make that happen, of course.
She runs her hands down Eurydice's body: hard and thin and firm and beautiful. She runs her hand up Eurydice's skirt a bit, not that it's much of a skirt. She flashes her husband some of the girls thighs: creamy and pale and something quite liable to turn his head. He exhales heavy, opens his mouth, and -- says nothing.
Drunk on the power, she hitches up her skirt a bit higher, lets her hands run down those thighs. Eurydice grunts in her hands, moving from side to side. She isn't sure, entirely, if Eurydice is into it until the girl grabs her hand and places it quite gently on her mount.
"I'd pay good to feel this," she whispers to Eurydice's ear; the girl nods, imperceptibly almost, but she catches it. She is sure that Eurydice is either smart enough to realize that Persephone is gonna have her walk out of here with a hell of a paycheck. or Eurydice is a bit stupid because she hasn't realized that to tempt Mr. Hades like this is to flirt with most unholy fire, but either way she's into it enough to go, "Oh, More!" and Persephone basks in queenly glory at the girl's sweet words.
"You think you got her? You ain't got shit," Persephone drawls, her voice only half-slurred. She's sober enough for this, sober enough. "She likes my touch a lot more than yours. And I'll let the little bird fly free."
"You're too free," her husband mutters; he's badly thrown off by her acting out, and his eyes remain rivited on her hand, resting just outside of Eury's creamy thigh. She pulled up the girl's slip just a bit more -- lord, this little thing, out in winter in just this slip. No wonder she ran down to Mr. Hades' waiting hand. Persephone's stomach twists with guilt; it's her who has made such pretty little dresses unfashionable. Her who caused this girl to come on down to the endless gloom.
But not just hers. She hesitates before pulling it up more; ain't sure if the girl wants to give the old man that much of a show. Eurydice tilts her head almost imperceptibly, and moves her hand smoothly, until she's just cupping the girl's mound of venus. Which is plenty explicit enough on its own. Her husband, the old man that he is, visibly swallows.
"I could fuck her," Persephone says; Eurydice wiggles against her, seemingly delighted at the thought. "I could fuck her better than you."
Her husband looks at her, his eyes not quite what she expected. She expected jealousy. She expected wrath. She suspected, perhaps, annoyance.
What she sees is a man who is enjoying the view. He walks over to her, ignores Eurydice entirely. Puts his hand on her cheek and holds her gaze with something heavy and not-quite-love. Lust, she thinks.
"You enjoying this? The way you've broken my--" She doesn't get to finish the sentence, because he doesn't let her; he grabs her cheek and very forcibly kisses her. It's a good kiss, the sort he might have given her years ago, when kisses between them were more than compulsatory duty, the sort of kiss that isn't so much looking for a spark as wanting to be devoured by it.
And damn the man, even though she wants to peel his skin from his bones with nothing more than the nails on her hands, she lets him kiss him, because she has missed this. Her hand tightens on Eurydice, who leans back, brushes her cheek against Persephone's, and then suddenly, she is being kissed by two people at once: Eurydice's tongue wicks upon her ear, then sucks down in a way that makes Persephone's knees feel quick weak. Her husband doesn't let her go far, though; his kiss never leaves her, his beard heavy enough on her chin that she knows her skin will be irritated. His hand grasps her ass, firm and possessive. His eyes are heavy.
And she does not know if she has never loved him more, or if she has never loved him less; either way, it doesn't seem to matter much at the moment. She wraps one arm around him, expects him to return it with his free hand. But he doesn't and when she opens her eyes, she sees Eurydice's hand frozen, half-reaching toward him. She looks at Persephone with questions in her eyes; is she afraid touching him will turn her to lava?
She grabs Eurydice's hand, puts it on her titty, avoids the issue for now. She isn't sure she wants to see Eurydice touch him, though she also can't imagine that either of them is going to be content to just fuck her. Still, for all that she's been hurt by him, she tells herself: this is her due.
Hades' hand hardens over her ass, Eurydice gently massaging her breast, her lips on her ear, and Hades' lips going from her lips down to her neck on the other side. She moans heavily, and Hades pulls back abruptly. "Off," he says, soft. "Get that off."
"I'll undress her," says Eurydice; her eyes flick over to Persephone: this okay, ma'am? And Persephone wants to laugh, because of course it's okay, isn't it? She's the one who wound up teasing them, and she's the one who's going to wind up having a threesome in her husband's office. She nods just once, and her husband busies himself by playing with her hair, trading kisses playfully so she doesn't have time to think about the fact that he's winning, unquestionably: has the bird in his hand and he's gonna have a hand in the bush, too. His kisses are hot, feverish; it wipes out her self-consciousness as Eurydice undoes the snap at the back of her dress and helps it fall. It catches at her hips and her husband's hand helps there, tugging it down impatiently. Eurydice helps pull it off, and her boots after for good measure.
She expects Eurydice's gonna help her pull down her stockings too, but the girl doesn't get the chance to: her husband is impatient, and she barely feels his hands at her ass before he's ripping her stocks clean through, tossing them like so much silk garbage into the air.
"I liked those stockings," she mutters between kisses.
"Buy you new ones," he says; he grabs her hand and directs it to his cock which proves just how desperate he is (and he is very, very desperate). He's already very hard; she rubs her hand down it, eliciting all sorts of little noises from him.
Eurydice stands and she expects the girl to stand back, but she doesn't; instead, she doesn't break eye contact as she reaches up and shrugs off her little vest. Her itsy-bitsy little black slip falls next, and then before she knows it girl is standing tits-and-ass naked in front of her. And, she has to admit, they're nice tits and a nice ass. Her husband gestures for the girl to come closer, and she swallows, uncomfortable with it but now that they've gotten to this point, well, she knows she can't put the canary back in the cage.
She promised her her freedom.
Still, it does rankle a bit to watch him kiss her. A jealous fire goes through her, white and hot; he doesn't look at her quite like he looks at Persephone, but it doesn't matter. The pain of it all hurts, and on instinct, she pulls Eurydice back, cups her possessively. Hades looks at her with an expression that's more amused than anything else; he doesn't offer any sort of jealousy when she starts to slip one finger between Eurydice's folds and she wonders if maybe this doesn't bother him the way it bothers her.
He leans in and kisses her; apologetic? Doesn't matter, she thinks. Eurydice moans softly as Persephone circles her clit, and she thinks: ah yes, that's it. He moves back to Eurydice, shuts her up for a moment with a kiss, but only a moment; Eurydice breaks the kiss, leans back on Persephone.
Her husband just watches them with heat in his eyes for a long moment, toying with his collar. If he hadn't ditched the tie, he could fiddle with that, but he decided to try to show her what a fool he could be and now he has to suffer.
"You're wearing too much," she growls, and directs her attention to Eurydice. Now, the fact is, Mr. Hades might not think much of it, but Persephone has had more than enough experience in a woman's touch to know how it is to please a woman. And Miss Persephone, being the goddess of all new life, has some power in the fucking; not as much as the goddess of love, mind, but she knows her way and she has her power and she is, down here, the lady of the underground, the patroness of all of this.
She bites down on Eurydice's finger and makes the girl moan; Hades isn't even bothering to hide the fact he's turned on now and his hand is drifting down to his pants now as he watches them. She gestures for him to come closer and he does; he kisses her hard, wraps his free hand over her cheek and claims her kiss in a long and easy
Eurydice's moaning is heavy now, and Hades smirks at her. "Beautiful woman," he whispers, and she basks in the glow. His hand moves away from her, but his gaze does not: he keeps looking at her with the same hot heat as he flicks at Eurydice's little perky nips with his finger. And maybe it's stupid, but at that moment she realizes: a man still loves her. Bringing this canary around was never quite about replacing her.
Funny to have that realization halfway into another woman's pussy, but she does. "Kiss me," she says, and two pairs of lips turn to her. She samples them both: the rougher kiss from her husband, his whiskers sliding across her chin, and then the softer, sweeter kiss from Eurydice, whose limps are plump with love or lust or maybe just the thought of a really good paycheck. Doesn't matter much to Persephone; the girl's come for what she's come for and Persephone only has this to give.
"Ah, aah," Eurydice says; Persephone circles her clit, low and slow. Hades rests his big, bulky head upon her shoulder, and it is such a heavy head, his; his hand traces further down the girl's belly, past her own hands and she doesn't quite realize what he's doing until Eurydice squirms back and she realizes he's opted to follow her path and make the girl cum.
"Did I say you could join?" She murmurs, not all that icy anymore; it's burnt out of her now. He tilts his head and just kisses her neck wordlessly in response, and in some strange way, it counts as an apology.
She can hear Hades' fingers as well as her own; he's given the girl twice fingers now, spread her a bit, and with Seph's fingers still moving up and down her slit it's not a surprise when the girl arches her back and comes in well under a minute. Between the two of them, she thinks, they certainly know how to please. Not one another mind, but they know how to please someone.
Hades holds out his fingers, still slick with the other woman's cum, and she lets him put them in her mouth. He makes a small noise in the back of his throat, wet with desire, as she sucks every last bit of Eurydice off of his fingers. It's possessive and carnal and she has never wanted him to fuck her more.
But he doesn't, or at least, not yet. Eurydice, having recovered, has gotten down on her knees and seems fit to replay the favor that her husband and her have gifted; she's got her hands on her husband's pants and her hands slithering up Persephone's thigh and Persephone realizes as Eurydice's fingers goes between her legs that the girl has got some experience with women herself.
It's her husband, however, who gets her mouth. Persephone watches her husband's face as he closes his eyes; he places one hand on the girl's head, which he would never do with Persephone herself. She'd bite it off if he tried, but Eurydice is (slightly?) more obedient. And she'd complain about that, but Eurydice isn't bad at multi-tasking; she's got her fingers running up and down Persephone's thigh in a way that's maddening; when Hades has the presence of mind to give her a kiss a second later, well, that's all she needs to open her legs up a little more and Eurydice takes full advantage, her finger repaying Persephone back in kind.
Persephone exists in a sort of nebulous haze of lust for a bit; her husband, still damnably mostly clothed, puts his free hand around her head and gently presses a kiss on her mouth; it's damnably chaste considering what's happened, but the look in his eyes makes her soft as it always, damnably, has. And it's easier not to think of much but instinct while she's got her husband staring at her like that, even when another woman's helping him get off.
Eurydice provides her service without commentary; she's diligent, and she can hear the sounds of her mouth working on her husband, though he is careful not to show his appreciation of such; instead, he has his hand caressing her chin, kissing her lips. The woman under his feet may as well be an afterthought and much to her jealousy, Persephone likes that. Eurydice seems to get impatient; she switches spots; she hears he pull away from her husband but can't fathom why until the thumb that's been slowly circling her folds is replaced by a tiny, darting tongue.
"Oh!" She says, stupidly, taken by surprise; Eurydice seems to know her way, and gently flicks her tongue up and down, up and down. Hades chuckles, and she assumes the girl has her hand on him but she isn't looking away from him as he watches her, his expression warm and so sweet she could almost -- almost -- forget just what he is.
"Beautiful," he murmurs to her. "Beautiful."
And then he is kissing her again and there is nothing to her but movement; her hand slowly pressing Eurydice's face more into her legs, yes, there, touch her there; her husband, pressing in behind the girl, his body heavy and warm and his arms around her. She gasps and Hades takes the moment to deepen the kiss, to press his tongue and all but marry her there. The girl's tongue is good, and Persephone gives a low mean deep in her throat and Hades knows, knows, what it means.
"Back off," he says, gently to Eurydice; she does, and before Persephone can ask what he's doing he's got her leg half up on his shoulder and he presses her all the way into the wall. What happens next doesn't take long but is certainly the most passionately they've rutted in this office in a long time. Eurydice doesn't intercede; she isn't really conscious of what Eurydice is going, though, because her eyes are closed and she is murmuring only his name, only his name in a language so old no one but him will understand it.
And he is kissing her, he is kissing her hard as he can, and he is fucking her hard too, his cock finding no resistance after Eurydice's ministrations. She's always liked the fill of him, and she doesn't seem to have the ability to stop telling him so, the words clumsily falling from her mouth and picked up in his kisses. "Love, love," she whispers. He says nothing, his entire formation of brain sells seemingly focused on this.
And for a moment they are, for the first time in centuries, one body, one mind. In his mind she is sure they are one machine: his piston, her gasket, both keeping the engine going. "Goddess," he murmurs into her shoulder, an old epiphet; he is praying, and he is slamming her into the wall of his office, and she wonders if they arne't going to create another crack in the wall, just there, just there, and maybe it'll slow them down and maybe -- maybe she can't thikn about that anymore, becuase now his tongue is in her mouth and his hand is protecting her head and his hand is holding her leg up and caressing it as his cock is within her and then she is coming, and she is coming hard, and she is barely able to breathe because she is so overwhelmed by how things could be -- and how they are.
Her husband doesn't stop, keeps going for one, two, three strokes more, and then he follows after, the giant wall of the man tumbling down and leaning in her arms. Neither of them dares breathe for a long moment; when she can breathe, he kisses her, long and sweet, and it's only after she has to come up for air from that she sees Eurydice, redressed, sitting quietly back in her chair.
Persephone doesn't bother to redress; just strides over to his desk naked and fumbles around for his checkbook. Himself still somewhat recovering, he just barely has enough sense to tuck his cock back in his pants and lean against his wall as she rifles through the desk and finally finds the checkbook. She signs her name and the date and hesitates, looking at the amount. She looks at him, still recovering, and the girl, who in the post-lust haze she can see is bone-thin. She does a ruthless calculus in her head: Looks at the girl, looks at her man, and decides it's best to prevent him from trying to make her jealous again with the largest deterrent she can provide.
"Blank check," she says, simply, ripping it out and handing it to Eurydice, whose eyes go wide with surprise as its placed in her hands. "Write in whatever you'll think you need. Maybe a little extra, since I don't think we'll be meeting again." She glares at her husband who doesn't look back, his eyes down on the floor as if he, too, is coming to terms with what has happened. "Definitively a little extra. And maybe a cherry on top."
"Yes," Eurydice says; she looks at the work contract sitting on the table and hesitates. Persephone does the thinking for her; she grabs it, rips it. Doesn't dare to look at her husband for his reaction.
"Go on," she says. "Trains run on the hour. Ain't much traffic going back up if you gather my meaning." It's a bit of a warning, and a bit of a threat, too, and the girl picks up on both, running out of the office so fast she's surprised the door doesn't swing back and forth from the force of it all.
"Jealous woman," he murmurs. It's the wrong thing to say. She spits down on his carpet, and wonders how they can go from one extreme to the other so fast. He seems to realize that it was the wrong thing to say quickly, and comes closer to her. "No one will ever--" He starts, tries to grab her cheek, but such is overwhelming and she -- she needs another drink to dull her edges, and she wants to have a good long painful think, and he isn't good at helping her do either of those things.
That's the thing with marrying death: it washes away all those little human pains, and just
"Don't," she says gently. His hand -- and his face -- fall, and she grabs him close into a hug. Now Persephone knows she is being the mother of all mixed signals, but the fact is, things are mighty jumbled and even if she's frustrated with him, well, she loves him too. "We'll talk about it soon. But now--I can't, okay?"
He nods. She doesn't want to risk them ending on any more sour a note, so she dresses quickly then, and he doesn't look at her and she doesn't look at him. Still, as she pulls on her dress, she feels his hands as he helps zip her up in the back, helpful and stone-silent. And it's not nothing, that.
"Later," she says; he nods, presses a kiss to her forehead. It's enough for now. It's leaving his office without screaming, even if it's also leaving his office without really thinking about what they just did as well.
She finds her way back to the bar, where Hermes is still sitting, still gently sipping at her gin and serving some of the other workers in her absence. He raises his eyes as she comes in, her hair all wild and her dress somewhat ruinous.
"You put a hand on that girl?" He says, careful. There's some disapproval in his voice there, for Hermes does not hate the girl. Nor does she, jealous bitch though she may be at times. It isn't the girl's fault, what's happened between her husband and her. She hopes that that girl does cash that check, does cash that checks for a good read of money. She literally can't clean them out, but Hades will flinch if he sees their income go down a bit and maybe that'll be enough to make him not try to make her jealous again.
Or maybe he'll just built another factory, double-down to try to avoid his losses. But he knows how she feels about that, and she hopes that his knowledge of that will reign in his horrible impulses.
"Not a hand," says Persephone. She pours herself two fingers of whiskey, gently leans herself against the wall. "A finger or two, maybe."
IT means more than what she says, and perhaps Hermes can smell the sex on her, because he raises his eyes and doesn't ask any questions. Persephone takes the bottle and toddles off to the edge of the bar, raises a salute to the girl, and hopes that the bird is flying free of this mess.
Maybe if she thinks real hard, she can find a way to get back to what they were, once, him and her.
She closes her eyes, sips her whiskey, and tries to remember a time when they were happy, in a garden with flowers all around.