Who: Josh Washington and Hades What: Fixing Josh’s face When: Saturday the 4th Where: Hades’s place Warnings: Low, body horror Status: Complete as of posting
Josh is ready for this shit to be over. Like, so fucking ready. He keeps having to wipe his face after every damn sip of water because it keeps dripping out of the the side of his face. Chewing is hard, swallowing is harder.
Don’t even talk to him about how it’s impacted his sex life. Like, Felix has been great about everything, still kissing him. But he misses being able to return some oral intimacy, you know? It’s a hardship.
And then there’s his self esteem, blah blah blah. His life is a mess. Thank god he’s taking this semester off.
So he shows up at his not-dad’s door, ready to have some magic worked on him.
Hades had been practicing, long before Josh’s arrival - because, well, this is important and he didn’t want to screw up the magic. He was probably capable of a lot more than he was letting himself give into, being a god, but overall his magic was very fire and brimstone - showers of sparks and plumes of black smoke, ash floating to the ground like grey flakes of snow. Fire was fierce and a hungry serpent; it could do away with everything a person loved in merely minutes.
But still. It wasn’t like he lived in Hell or anything - he always got offended when people confused the Underworld for ‘the worst place.’ Just so happened, his hair burst into flames when he got a little emotionally off-kilter, what of it?
Anyway, some practicing and branching off outside the box was necessary. Old spells, inked on parchment in his spell books from the Underworld - he’d studied and tested a few things. A potion might do the trick, but rather, he went with studying how to turn something back into its original form. First, he practiced on Cerberus - and much to Hades’ delight, it was successful. The small, fat puppy with sweet, piercing blue eyes now was an actual hellhound, three heads and deep growls and all.
Those growls sounded when the doorbell rang, but Hades quickly shushed all three barking heads. Josh was expected at the Laguna Beach mansion. Opening the door to the entranceway (he put Cerberus in the other room - that was a surprise that could wait), he let his quasi-son inside. “Here you are - ready for the big day?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.” He’s not entirely sure about magic being done on him, but -- hey. If it fixes his face, then awesome. He does hear the growling, but he knows Hades has a dog so he’ll just put it down to that for now.
Josh takes his glamour bracelet off and tucks it into his pocket so Hades can see what he’s working with. He ducks his head a little automatically, since he’s still not a super huge fan of the mess on his face. “Fun, right?”
Shit, son. Hades can completely understand why Josh would want to fix that mess. Not only is it unsightly but, more importantly, it just looks painful. Like it would hurt to chew, or swallow, or even have air hit the exposed skin. The last thing he wanted was for someone he cared about to be living his life in such pain - Josh didn’t deserve that.
“Alright, have a seat,” Hades leads them both to the living room, and motions for Josh to make himself comfortable anywhere he likes. “Now, I can’t guarantee that this will get rid of the other wendigo stuff - like the entire curse - but it should make your face whole again. I tried the magic on Cerberus first and his physical appearance changed, but he’s still...a hellhound. If that makes sense.”
“So he’s not a fluffy puppy anymore, but he’s still a denizen of hell? Or -- something?” He doesn’t care about getting rid of the entire curse, honestly. He can deal with rare meat, he just wants to be able to look in the mirror without wanting to smash it.
“He’s back to his original form,” Hades chuckles wryly. “At least, what he’s meant to look like - three heads, teeth dripping with acid from the bowels of hell, red eyes, that sort of thing.” Honestly, he has no clue why the OC brought Cerberus to him in the form of a snuggly-wuggly-love-dub puppy or whatever the fuck. But after finishing two dream sets, falling into a coma, being kissed out of that coma, and some practice? He finally has his hellhound where the terrifying creature belongs.
Hades won’t even sic Cerberus on anyone. At least, no one he actually likes.
Opening the spellbook to the correct page, he blows a bit of dust off and goes over the words again. He knows everything from heart by now, but still. This is important. “Any last requests?” It’s a joke. Josh will survive a bit of magic, no doubt.
“I will be very careful when playing fetch with him, next time.”
Josh cracks his neck and his knuckles and stretches a little. “Um, tell my sisters and Felix I love them. If you kill me, I’m haunting your ass.”
“If I kill you, I can just bring you back - I’ve no use for your soul now anyway,” Hades winks, again, clearly just yanking the ol’ chain. Soon, this will be over for Josh. Well, he’ll be able to look in the mirror and not hate what he sees. He’ll actually be comfortable in his own skin again, which is also important. Quality of life and all that.
It takes a bit of murmuring the words and a cloud of black smoke - everyone has a color, at least in Hades’ world - and it is a similar scent to the smoke that dissipates after he teleports somewhere. Fire and brimstone, something burning. But it clears and then Josh’s face is repaired, good as new.
“Oops, I think I gave you Kanye’s face on accident,” Hades teases him. He summons a mirror, which appears in his hand with another puff of smoke. “Take a look.”
“Look, I will take Kanye’s face I’m okay with that.” Josh feels at his face first, after the smoke clears. He can’t feel the jagged lines of the scar tissue, the way his teeth overlap and stick out of the side of his face. He bites down on his lip and his teeth don’t pierce the skin.
When he takes the mirror he just sees -- himself. And embarrassingly enough he bursts into tears, pulling Hades into a tight hug. “You have no idea what this means to me.”
The tears, Hades isn’t expecting those - but he can feel his charbroiled heart swell a little when Josh pulls him into a hug. He laughs a little and pats the boy’s shoulder - and even though Josh isn’t technically a boy, sure, he’s a grown man? Hades still views him like he would his own son, as in, forever young and in need of some looking after.
“Just glad I could help you out,” he says gruffly, and it’s honest. What’s the point of having all this godly power if he can’t use it to make things better for those he gave a shit about? “If I can do anything else, whenever, for you or the sisters or that boyfriend of yours, you let me know.”
Hades is the best dad he could ask for, honestly. He’s there when it’s important, when Josh needs him. Josh squeezes him tight before he takes a step back, scrubbing at his face. “I’ll have my people call your people.”