SHE STILL SMELLS LIKE SPRING . like the world up above , it clings to her flushed skin , her cheeks are rosy and bright , she looks like a vision , like the girl he met in the garden so many centuries ago , in her green dress , flowers tangled in her hair . persephone loves the surface world , loves the warmth that sweeps across the globe with her very presence . it’s the climate she grew up in , the humid greenhouse in which her mother tended to her , and it will always be home .
but this is home too , and she loves this . her heart had chugged along to the rhythm of the train , six months gone and she was finally on her way , back to the kingdom of the man she loved , and she was bursting at the seams with things to tell him . things she wished they had shared , she could fill their nights with endless chatter , whilst he listened patiently on , and she – she could bring spring to him . see his cheeks grow pink , hear his laugh fill her ears .
rushes forward , into his arms , suitcase forgotten on the platform . presses her head against his chest and hears it , their shared melody , the uplifts of las she had longed to hear . i love you , i missed you , i waited . he smells of ash , of smoke and concrete ; she smells like blooming roses , like fresh cut grass , and their scents mingle , they intertwine . she kisses him , and tastes reddened pomegranate , ripe to burst .
“ – i couldn’t keep away . “
he was once so preoccupied with appearances —— hades wasn’t sure entirely if that was something he chose, or something that the world had forced onto him, the role of the KING, ruler of the dead, evoking images of graves, cold, hard stone, an immovable will —— && he still kept them up, calling upon them like a shield, a wall with no scaffolds. but for just a moment as the sun of his kingdom runs towards him the man lays down all his defenses && there is no one but she to bear witness.
there was no point in keeping up appearances around her anyway —— not when she brought out the very BREATH from his lungs that lay dormant now six months a year, && eternally long before that, not when she had always been able to see right through him ( or perhaps he had let her see, unknowingly, ever since that first time he watched the earth’s sun kiss her shoulders in her mother’s garden && wished, deep inside a heart he hadn’t realized was still beating that it could be his lips instead ).
he must have done something right, though, in some part of his long, long existence, because now it was his own lips that kissed her, as he wrapped his arms around the small of her back, fabric bunching against his skin, && smiled, lightly, against the space of her lips.
❛ I must admit I’m glad for that —— it was cold without you. ❜ his hushed tone manages not to echo anywhere beyond the little cavern they’ve made as he stands just a breath from her, forehead resting at the top of her brow. ❛ where would you like to start? ❜ it’s a simple question, but one full of promises; they had all the time in the world ( infinity for hades was SIX MONTHS && to him that time meant everything ).
