Who: Megara & Hades What: On a trip for milk and things, demony things occur and Hades breaks into more powers of godhood - and also burns down a grocery store, nbd When: Today Where: Grocery store, KFC Chicken Roof, then the lawn of the death god Rating/Warning: Violence against shades, magical arson Status: Complete!
Really. Really. More errands to run with his dutiful assistant, who was involved with so many aspects of Hades’ life that he lost track of where any potential lines were - it, sometimes, did seem like they were married, just without the consummation of said ‘marriage.’ Or maybe it was some kind of work marriage, coupled with domestic shit, all of those aspects in perfect, snarky harmony - because Meg did have a key to his house. She did know more about him than most everyone else. And she was at the fucking grocery store with him now.
Not like it bothered him though. It really didn’t. He’d probably been less comfortable with his ex-wife, which was something he didn’t care to think about - because considering it meant thinking about the dissolution of his marriage, and how terrible he was at being married. Maybe that was the key to success with those heart-related matters, at least for him - just avoiding the legal bindings. The idea, overall, of him letting his guard down was terrifying but it was happening regardless - he’d actually talked about Zeus, with Meg, and doing such a thing was rare. Very rare. As rare as a sincere fart in church.
Alright, so his own issues aside - they’d come here for a reason. The ominous feel in the air was heavy yet he was making a movie, and keeping a post-production crew happy, hydrated, and fed was of the utmost importance. They needed water, soda, juices, some milk for the endless waterfalls of coffee. The trays of meats and cheeses were already in the cart - sometimes certain restaurants would offer catering specials, so a buffet of sorts could be set up in the studio, but their usual had been experiencing problems too. Like, as in, it had been squashed from what he heard. Weird shit was upon them.
“Okay, so I guess we need...” Hades checked the list, grumbling. “...soy milk? Who the fuck drinks soy milk?” Seemed as if it’d taste like feet to him.
Personal assistants often had a certain window in their employer’s lives - she remembered her contract, how the confidentiality clause was one long text of legal word vomit in regards to Hades, his privacy, and the consequences of spilling his dearest and dirtiest secrets to the world. Did she ever expect to know as much as she knew now? Gods, no, but now she was involved in his life and him in hers, and that extended to even another lifetime beyond this very one.
Meg imagined the brittle, wrinkly Fates cackling in glee, amused on how well they wove the lines of destiny. Ugh.
“I do,” she sourly informed, adjusting the sunglasses atop her head. In flip-flops, she dragged her feet to the cooled glass door and pulled out the front runner silk soymilk to dump it in the cart. “At home, anyway. The vanilla kind. Really good in smoothies and it doesn’t expire as fast as cow milk does. So judgey, Mr. Hades.”
Tsk, tsk.
Silk Soymilk. Hades was skeptical - because he didn’t think it’d go down silkily, he thought it’d be a goddamn nightmare on the intestines, but alright, Nutmeg. “Whatever tickles your pickle,” he said, and no, he hadn’t been thinking of that. Much. “I’m sure the lactose intolerant crew members will thank you for your diligence.”
Was that it? Well, he also supposed they needed actual creamer - so he found something delicious and neutral in the cooler as well, adding it with the feet-tasting milk. “What else do we need? You know, I actually can’t remember the last time I went grocery shopping with someone.”
How had they not killed each other yet? You’d think doing something so domestic would bring out the verbal and literal barbs (or maybe Meg had a knife stashed in her bra) but yet nothing had happened to cause that. Knock on wood.
Hmmm, let’s see. Megara peered at the list, a bit of a shove against Hades in which ultimately ended in somewhat of a lean against who would, eventually, become the flaming overlord of death. “Energy drinks,” she deduced once those earthy eyes made it down the selections. Either that, or they had to supply crack cocaine to get some of the crew energized for hours on end - some people needed something a little stronger than coffee (and something a lot more detrimental to their health) to continue to function under the director’s iron fist. After that, they were done.
“I find it so hard to believe that someone wouldn’t want to spend these simple, mundane moments listening to your nitpicky commentary over groceries, though,” Meg then tacked on with charming snark, mahogany eyebrow raised. “Maybe I’m just so dead inside I don’t care?” Or she was merely used to it, and was unafraid to ping-pong his criticism right back at him.
Then, something shattered. A lot of somethings shattered, an explosion of glass that carried a gust of wind into the store from the very front - it was accompanied by screams, a sudden but quick quake of the Earth, zaps and sparks of something green, otherworldly lightning. Her heart stopped for a split second, shock and the general emotion of what the hell is going on sinking into her skin as she clenched the shopping cart tight. So much her knuckles went white.
Energy drinks were fucking disgusting (Hades would almost rather do a few lines of la cocaína, finely cut with an elite black card), but they ought to have options for those who worked long hours - especially the editors, who had one hell of a task ahead of them. Not to mention that decisions about re-shoots would be going through very soon, and those were going to be a barrel of laughs.
But the sounds of breaking glass, and things crashing to the polished floors sufficiently caught his attention. Felt like the entire building shook and then split open, right down the center, revealing an electrically-charged green abyss. It also felt like the store caved in on itself - the tinny music was done, lights were flickering, and now the soundtrack was screaming and panicking people. “Stay with me,” he told Meg, throwing an arm out as if to block her from whatever debris might be hurled their way. “Toward the exit - “
It was shaping up to be a lot of debris too - because bodies were dropping like flies in neighboring aisles, all thanks to the appearance of hulking, dark apparitions that looked gnarled and twisted, with teeth that rivaled his own. Teeth Hades suddenly bared, because for some reason, the intruders felt familiar - and they were quickly sapping life force and energy from nearby beings.
Towards the exit sounded like a plan, a good one, because there was a mass of spiked darkness afloat radiating a kind of energy that had things plop out. Hunched, dreary things. Almost humanoid but their fingers were piercing claws, their veins lit with a kind of arcane poison, and what looked like eyes a stark white against the horror of their faces. It was a kind of terror that looked like it’d exist in some kind of fiction - it was something that shouldn’t be real but it was, and there was an army.
“I’m never going grocery shopping with you again,” Meg snorted, their getaway now blocked by a thing. Demon, monster? Either description seemed fitting, and in desperate attempt to be equipped with an item that could somehow be used as a weapon, she pulled a can of coke from its plastic net that held it together. Shake it up a bit and it was a fizzy, non-effective bomb ready to toss for a distraction. “This would be a reaaaaal good time for you to suddenly know how to teleport with your smoke effects.”
An extra jiggle of the aluminum can so the carbonation could build up, and Megara hurled a home run right into the face of a demon only a mother could love. “Move!”
Did she just...? Hades was actually kind of in awe. Because most people wouldn’t have the balls or the va-jay-jay to toss a can of fizzy soda at something that looked like it had just been shat from the bowels of hell. But, okay, he supposed Meg had a point - in their shared ‘dreamworld,’ he could effectively disappear and reappear in a puff of smoke, and often used it as a method of travel - when he wasn’t summoning his chariot, that is.
Only thing was, the chariot in all of its gothic macabre horror, pulled by a creature that was sometimes a dragon, sometimes a large winged bat or whatever, wasn’t arriving. He also seemed unable to teleport them anywhere - and he tried, oh, he tried, nearly blowing a blood vessel. The can of carbonation exploded in the demon’s face, and maybe the thing was as surprised as Hades had been because it did pause for a moment. But then extended claws, those teeth dripping with the blood of virgins, probably. Whatever it was doing, it was trying to get into their heads - but there was no getting past the titanium defenses erected in the mind of the Lord of the Dead.
Didn’t mean he could teleport them out of here though. “I can’t - “ That came out more in a snarl of rage, because he didn’t like failure. If he didn’t do something, however, he would be out one assistant.
“I can’t - “
Fire, a literal burst of it. From the walls, raining down from the ceilings, it came from somewhere but he wasn’t sure where - just that the blue flames, bright as if they’d been blasted from a blowtorch, caught above him before swiftly turning yellow, then red, orange, a myriad of colors.
The demon in front of them went up in a plume of smoke, singed to ash.
Thing was, Meg didn’t have the developing prowess of godhood; she was all human, flesh and blood, a mortal heart and a mind never trained even the slightest to deal with the onslaught of some kind of - mindrape? Gods, it was the only way to describe it. It wasn’t a physical attack but its eyes were burning, searing some kind of imprint in her mind, where nothing felt right. Nothing felt normal, because where the hell was she and why was this happening I gave it coke why am I -
Blocking her ears with her palms didn’t cut anything, but what happened afterwards, the impressive lightshow of flames and heat that didn’t come from the incarnates of terrors - it severed whatever flow of fear that thing was giving off, and her eyes were able to blink with some kind of clarity.
“Did you - ?” Did he?? Megara could almost kiss him. But it wasn’t exactly over yet, because there was more of them swarming, metal screeching against linoleum tile and all of aisle number eight, the one with the all the energy drinks and all those cans of coca-cola these monsters didn’t like was teetering, about to crash down on one almost unsuspecting personal assistant but, nope.
Not today, aisle eight.
Whirlwind of confusion somewhat settling, dove out of the way and rolled onto some shards of glass, literal spilled milk that got all over her hair, and the rest was an interesting domino effect of aisle after aisle collapsing into an impressive storm of a fucking mess. Clean up on all the aisles, stat.
“Meg!” Hades whirled around and she was already gone, both of them having avoided the mountain of collapsing energy drinks. The mess on the floor was now sticky and revolting - they were swimming in a pool of coke (the beverage, not the kind you’d find in Scarface’s office). He slid over to help her up, now that she’d successfully rolled out of the way from her doom.
But his heated godly anger had not been squelched yet. The fire was still ripping through the aisles, scorching the contents, balls of flames like the pins of grenades had been pulled, spiraling and twisting out of control. Even his eyebrows seemed like they were made of flames, his eyes red-rimmed and nothing close to warm. More like blazing.
Pieces of the ceiling started falling, like the whole building was melting. Drip, drip, drip - the fire was just so hot, it was burning through everything. Like it had been summoned from the depths of Hell itself. “You don’t see any more, do you?!”
The demons, that is.
“Wow,” Megara blinked, and okay, maybe not all the demon-induced confusion had pacified - she seemed to be sufficiently distracted by his sudden hellish features. Nevermind the grocery store that they were currently broiling in (though maybe it was just her, Hades seemed to have some kind of immunity considering his nature), or the fact that she was sticky and dripping in homage to a badly shot food porno.
It was really tempting to blow air onto his eyebrows to see if they’d be snuffed out but -
First. Demons. What the heck did they do to her head? “No, I don’t - I don’t think so, but we need to get out, now.” Before the smoke got too much for her lungs, and most of everyone seemed to have evacuated. Though that portal, whatever it was? Who knew when it’d spit out more of those things, and she didn’t want to stay around. “And we need to do something about your face.”
Her priorities were a little bit foggy, alright?
Maybe Hades couldn’t teleport before, but he was surging with power now - something so energizing within, like for just a split second he knew who he was. Knew what he was meant to do, and who he was meant to be. Dreaming the way he had been, there were a lot of conflicting feelings warring in his head and in the vicinity of his charbroiled briquette heart. But now right then - he just felt it all fall into place, click, very briefly.
It wouldn’t last, however. If you asked him to teleport again? Probably not happening.
And yet, he grabbed Meg around the waist, attaching her to his side. Didn’t think about it, didn’t consider, just...poof. They both disappeared in a puff of black smoke, as another ceiling beam fell right in the spot they had been.
Reappearing, on the roof of somewhere, Hades took a glance around. “Uh. I don’t know where we are.” Hey, shit didn’t go smoothly the first time, okay? He also still looked like Satan’s angrier cousin - good thing there were no mirrors around.
Megara couldn’t say she knew where they were, either, but the last frazzled pieces of her mind were joining back together for what closest thing to coherency after that ordeal - much better now that there was some distance between her and those nightmareish demons. Now she could feel the weight of how disgusting she felt, and probably smelled, like a mix of dairy and super sweetened corn syrup.
Who was the prettier one of them, though? They’d never know, but she could ignore her current state of being to take a good look at his.
“Hey, you did stellar,” she softly said, in that rich and deep voice of hers - it had a seductive element to it that was amplified when she caught his face between her hands, drawing him near. Their eyes connected, the nearing of their mouths, inch by inch...
Until her mouth didn’t meet his, and she angled her lips up to blow across his brows rid the fire from them. There. Fixed. “I think you’re beginning to master your God of the Death look, Hades. You’re flaming, in a non-homosexual way.”
Give Hades a moment, he’d figure out where they were (probably on top of a fucking KFC or something, shit) and also would maybe figure out if he could do that teleporting thing again. But he was just so what the actual hell had just happened, and Meg had almost gotten crushed by a display of diet sodas and energy drinks with names like ‘Whoop Ass’ and he burned down a grocery store, that was probably not good - so of course the natural thing to do was grab her and plant one on her.
Hard, spiced, passionate - a kiss that screamed we’re aliiiiiiiiiiiive!!!!! before he let go, and realized that his whole being wasn’t hot as burning embers. It was like all that had been extinguished, fire squelched, and he was...mostly back to normal.
“I’m just going to take your word for it,” he huffed, panting, as he put his hands on his knees and attempted to catch his breath, while covered in a residue of complete and utter filth. “I burned down a grocery store and what the fuck was that? Someone’s dream bullshit?”
For the love of god, fix it. Because there was no way he was cool and calm with any of that crap which had just occurred (okay, maybe like just the parts that involved demons and mind probing he wasn’t, some of the other stuff was fine).
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmffffffff,” was the muffled sound made against his mouth, because what other reaction could she even have to something like that? Besides, of course, the bug-eyes of utter surprise because while she was also happy that they survived their first (hopefully last?) tango with evil creatures, she also hadn’t been expecting to be at the receiving end of a kiss. From Hades.
That had her swaying. Physically. To the point that it was probably best to sit her ass down to process everything. The roof they were on, how they could see the black smog in the distance and the crackling green energy from where they were at. There was the smell of fried chicken, too, tantalizing and delicious, since they were indeed on the rooftop of a reputable KFC establishment.
Megara let out a deep breath. “Well,” she paused for a second and rubbed her lips together to make a pop sound. They were warm still - his mouth was hot, fire and brimstone. “You burned down the grocery store, but you got us out. That’s good news. The bad news is, we have nothing to take back with us, you burned down a grocery store, my mind feels like it’d been violated, and we’re both in desperate need for showers.”
To emphasize, she wiped some damp milk from her hand across his cheek.
Felt like there was more bad news than good, but let’s not focus on that. Sour milk on Hades’ face had him looking like Meg had just dipped her fingers in dog shit and touched him - a shower was indeed desperately needed, stat. “You can take a sick day, I’ll handle the starving post-production crew, and as for the grocery store - I’ll send them a check.” From the actual ashes there would arise something strong and new, without the portal to Hell and the demons in the frozen food aisle this time. Fuck off from the Hot Pockets, assholes.
“But, alright, here - “ He wasn’t going to mention that they were on a KFC (that was fake chicken and the smell of cracker biscuits, plus whipped air ‘mashed potatoes’) or that he had smashed his face against hers for a minute there. Instead, he wrapped an arm around her waist again. “Hold on.”
Poof
And there they were. In the oak tree in front of his house. “....fuck, I give up. Let’s just use the front door now.”
Wait, what, why was he telling her -
There goes the poof, the charcoal wisps of smoke that came with his newfound skill of teleporting. That was a little dizzying, and she steadied herself by clamping her hands onto his shoulders until she physically and mentally felt more grounded and less…guh. “Warn me a little extra the next time you do that,” Meg groaned and squinted her eyes at him. “Mortal, remember?”
At least it wasn’t another KFC roof or anywhere ridiculously high (otherwise she would lose her shit, all her shit, probably climb him like a tree and scream because no, fuck heights, fuck it all), and it was somewhere with bathroom facilities in walking distance. Don’t worry, Hades, practice makes perfect.
But before they went inside... “You’re okay? You just went...lord of hell in there, Hades.” Never mind the fat kiss he smothered her with. That’d be brought up, later. “I think I just need a shower and a quick nap, but I can still come with you.”
Along with the ‘we’re not talking about the big fat kiss, or the teleporting fail’ there was that whole ‘Lord of Hell’ thing that Hades also didn’t want to talk about. But yet Meg brought it up anyway and here they were. “I’m fine,” he dismissed, though surely FUCKING LIE was lit up in neon lights above his head. “We knew it would happen eventually, right?”
Trouble was, he kind of liked knowing who he was for a minute there - as fleeting as it was, it felt comforting. And he wasn’t sure what that said about him, that he did like the power. Was it wrong of him to? If he didn’t like it, was it like denying who he was? Could he even do that?
“Shower and a nap, go for it,” he changed the subject, though it was possible Meg wouldn’t let that go. “You know where the guest bathroom and bedrooms are.”
Classic evasiveness. Meg caught it on the spot, but wouldn’t push it for now. A whirlwind of shit happened within the span of ten minutes, from demons to property destruction, newfound teleportation skills and that big fat smooch - having some time to process things was the smart route to go. Then she’d bring it all up.
In the most opportune times, too. Maybe while he was drinking (so he could choke for a couple seconds), or while he was on the shitter (to ruin his alone time with the porcelain god). Either way, none of this was being dropped. Hades knew her well enough.
“Don’t disappear into your underground hell rivers while I’m out of commission,” she sighed, making a face of utter disgust while she tried to wipe any sticky residue on her stained jeans. Uh, ew. With a flick of her wrist, she flipped that tangled and messy hair back, slapping him with it a little. “A nap wouldn’t hurt you, either.”
Calm those fiery powers down before he burned down anything else. Property destruction was a pretty penny.