WHO: Apollo and Clio WHEN: Starting straight after Melpomene left, and into the next day. WHERE: Clio's place (and Melpomene's bath) WHAT: "I suppose we should do that talking thing." WARNINGS: TBA
The bathwater tinted sunset pink; there was a split on his ribs still oozing a steady stream of blood into the water. Apollo sat still, watching the blood form pathways over the surface of the water.
He followed one pathways with his eyes: Ares. Reading into the swirls and eddies of his own blood for the best way to damage his brother. Through his pride, through his temple, through his men. The blood reached his knee, sticking out of the water like an island in the ocean, and split another way. A light ripple caused by his movements made the blood momentarily an M. Marcella. Through his children, yes, that was a path Apollo had taken before, punishing the children for the sins of their parent.
The M, too, split two ways. One pathway, fainter, could be what happened if he followed the thought that told him it would be fun to make her fall in love with him.
One, the thicker branch of the blood river: what it would be like to see how hard and how viciously and for how long she would try and fight him.
He breathed deep and the disturbance caused by the swell of his lungs turned the trails of blood into nothing more than faded, sunset pink once more.
Apollo sighed and sank deeper in the bath. After that first shower, when the hot water had sluiced over his smooth and muscled and very sore body, when he’d cracked off the sand that had caked with sweat and blood to his skin, he’d stepped back out into Melpomene’s bedroom to find her not there. Upon further naked inspection of the apartment found her gone completely. There was a note, and a promise of pizza which arrived not long after he’d read the words.
Apollo opened the door to the driver, naked and glistening from the shower, letting his beauty shine through despite the broken nose and cracked cheekbone and eye he still couldn’t open and the rest of the artwork of his bruised battered flesh. “The fuck-” said the delivery driver.
“You’re welcome,” said Apollo, and took the pizza to go and eat it in the bath.
Maybe the M was for Melpomene, he thought. If he’d approached her differently tonight about Hermes he could have leaned on her vengeful tendencies, bring out some of her old Seneca feelings, dig deep into those Shakespearean tales, and planned something truly punishing for Hermes. If Ares hadn’t rattled his brains, he could have gone that way. Perhaps still could. He was persuasive, and so far she had not been difficult to persuade.
Erato had been more difficult, but he’d won her back with proof of his love for her in the form of a luxurious weekend on Rhode Island, with a suite in the tower of a mansion looking over the sea, where they spent their days riding horses and picnicking under the sun and their nights (and the days, to be fair) making love.
Clio could prove to be more difficult still.
His Muses, lately, all so easily triggered. Apollo flicked his fingers across the bathwater, frowning. He was devoted to these goddesses, he’d taught them and loved them through hundreds of generations of mortal thought, as it changed, and as it changed them all. His love never wavered.
Clio… Apollo thought about Clio as he sank deeper in the bath and let the scalding heat of the water work magic on his muscles. How to prove how much he cherished her. How to prove her importance to him. How to get her to love him again, as he loved her.
He soaked until the bathwater lost its sting, which was partially the water losing heat, but mostly because the parts of his skin Ares had split open from the power of his blows were starting to mend.
By the morning, he could see out of his eye again, and move his jaw without it sending fireworks across his vision. Most importantly, he’d set his nose back to its old, perfect proportions, though the dark ghost of the bruise remained for now.
By the time Clio messaged him in the evening, by the time he arrived on her doorstep, he’d managed to heal the worst of his face. There were still traces – the cut through his eyebrow, he’d get that tomorrow, after he’d slept again, and the litany of bruises around his middle, those could be tomorrow’s mission too. If he healed everything up at once he’d sleep for another day – wounds inflicted by the god of war took more effort than others. His hands, though usable, were still a mess of bruises across his knuckles, but he quite liked the look of those because he could imagine each corresponding bruises on Ares’s stupid face.
But at least Apollo looked more like his beautiful self. If he was a little rough around the edges, if he carried himself a little heavier, well that was just a sign of how hard he’d fought, how hard he’d always fight, for his beloved and cherished goddesses.