enticements; a hades/persephone ficlet.
“…Are you sure you have to go out tonight?”
He can hear her splashing in the bathtub. And he knows very well that she knows exactly what she’s doing. The plaintive voice, the noisy bathing… Most think Persephone is a wide-eyed and naive innocent (which just goes to prove that the universe is full of idiots, if anyone could think Persephone still as pure as newly driven snow after a couple thousand years of marriage to him), but he knows. He knows how subtle and sly and sneaky (and sexy) she can be when she wants.
“This whole thing tonight is being thrown for me, babe,” he calls to her from the bedroom, standing before the closet still in his sweats. He hopes she’ll be quick in there - he’ll need to shower before he can put on the silk suit he’s got his eye on. Knew I shouldn’t have taken that run so late, he thinks. Damn my restless energy. “If I don’t show up, the press will go mad. And you know how things are with Steven Prescott right now. I can’t afford to do anything that would make the label look bad.”
“Label, pah!” she says defiantly. “You’re not your label. You have a life completely independent of that. And you work too much as it is.”
“What do you want me to do? Stay here every day? And risk saying something I shouldn’t around Zeus, or Poseidon, or Ares? You know I would, Persephone, and you know they’d use that to their advantage, the merciless bastards.” That last bit came out in something of a grumbled whisper, but she caught it nonetheless.
“I want you to be here for me, not them.” More splashing. “Your wife, remember? What was it you used to call me? ‘The light in your darkness’?”
“You’re still that,” he says defensively. “You’ll always be. But I’ve got a job, with obligations and responsibilities. And you’ve got your shows and party-planning. I wouldn’t ask you to give any of that up.”
“I only do all of that so I’m not sitting here twiddling my thumbs and eating too many caramel squares and dealing with Mum,” she says, her voice growing shriller. “I got sick of her spiteful remarks about you two thousand years ago, but she never seems to tire of listing your faults.” A loud splash suggests she’s thrown something. “Although sometimes I can’t help but see her point.”
“Persephone, please don’t talk like that,” he says quietly, coming to the doorway and leaning against the frame. She looks up at him through tearful lashes, pink lips pouted and knees drawn up beneath her chin. “You’re my Queen. The heart of me. I’m a cold and empty shell without you.”
She smiles slowly, and as she does he knows he’s played right into her plan. It’s the smile he’s never, ever been able to resist, the one that undoes every knot in his heart and unbuttons his every desire. Those strawberry curls, the rose petal lips, the sparkling blue eyes, that smile…
Persephone slides through the water, parting the foamy bubbles, and reaches a sudsy hand up to him. “Maybe you should remind me of all of that more often, hmm?”
And, like always, he’s powerless to resist her.
She’s slippery in his arms, but he holds her tightly. When she nips at his ear he can’t help but growl. She laughs in response, a bright, fragile sound of pure delight that quickly ends in a breathless gasp when he slides his hands down her curves.
“O King!” she says, trembling.
“Nothing but a servant to your Grace,” he replies.