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It was easy, asking for his help.
You had promised Erichthonios you’d not tell the Convocation, but Hermes is not of the Convocation yet. And Hermes would never allow any harm to befall the creatures or wardens of Pandaemonium.
In fact, you aren’t quite certain this Hermes has harmed anyone yet. Emet-Selch had called the Pandaemonium portal entrance abandoned and in great disrepair, yet you take it each day to fight new horrors alongside Themis. And Themis himself wears an ordinary mask about his neck, not one of the Convocation, despite how you know he sat upon the Seat of Elidibus during your time in Elpis.
It’s only logical then to tell the overseer of Elpis about the disaster that has befallen the halls of Pandaemonium on his very doorstep, and so you do.
Hermes is easy to find, even without Meteion by his side. So quizzical he is upon seeing you, so confused by your dearth of aether — and yet soon he forgets to ask who you are, for the deep horror of why you have come breaks his heart. His horror melts fast into anguish as he realizes the extent of your troubles. In his haste Hermes catches hold of your hand and veritably drags you alongside him as he heads toward Pandaemonium in hopes of saving what few lives he can.
It’s messy.
Erichthonios cowers at the presence of someone so important, his eyes nervous as he looks between you and Themis. Hermes must look so very different to him than to you. In your eyes Hermes’s kindness and grief, his compassion and cruelty, are obvious in each word he speaks. Yet Hermes is a subtle man, always hiding behind his mask as every proper scholar of Elpis does. Without Meteion’s innocent quandaries and anguished pleas to betray him, his calm surface hides well the roiling waters of turbulent emotion that dwell ever-present within m him.
Themis sees beyond his facade as well as you do. He steps forward, pleasant and ageless in his boyish youth, and does what you know Elidibus will spend lifetimes doing: He mediates.
Days pass as the three work on their plans to stabilize Pandaemonium until a safe way to enter its second-most layer can be found. You’re a bit superfluous given their creation magics and brilliance, so you spend the time traveling between past and present. The safe world of the present feels more a dream than your time spent listening to the three of them debate magic you barely understand. So long have you lived in a world of violence and strife, peace fits you like an ill-made coat in the dredges of Garlemald: necessary, but somehow unpleasant all the same.
One of the nights you spend in the past, you bite into a sugary apple while you watch Erichthonios gesture hesitantly as he sprouts an idea so wonderfully brilliant the loporrits might wish to adopt him for their own — and the odd irony of it all strikes you. It burns like a blow to the cheek. Two of these men would spend lifetimes seeking to destroy all you hold dear. And yet here they are, awake for sleepless nights, hoping to save as many lives of Pandaemonium’s lost wardens as they can. They yearn to preserve life and find peace, while you struggle to remember what the latter feels like even as you hold it in your hands.
Eventually, Pandaemonium stabilizes enough to be left to its own devices. Themis returns to report to his mysterious friend, while Erichthonios works on unlocking the doors to further enter Lahabrea’s lair. This leaves Hermes as the only one sentimental enough to celebrate, and you the only one to celebrate with. Or so you think when he asks you, yet from how his eyes light with enthusiasm when you say yes, you wonder if he’d have invited you regardless.
He lives on a tiny island floating in the sky. It’s a bit sad, how barren his living space is. As if he fears his individuality even when left alone, he has a table with one chair well-used and another tucked away without expectations of guests, a singular table on which to study and eat, and nary a trinket of sentimentality on display. The amount of candied apples strewn about seem more a method of comfort than mere indulgence, as though only in the temporal can he excuse himself some measure of ‘him’ in this space he calls home.
Meteion enjoys picnics, he tells you, and he guides you to a blanket stretched out upon fresh grass. The wind tastes clean and bright. She loves them so much, he confesses as he sets down plates for you both full of fruit and cheeses and crackers and so much more, that he regrets thinking her only in need of aetherial sustenance. “So wise,” he says with a rueful laugh. “And yet I know so little. How much happier she might be if I had simply given her the means to eat.”
“Why didn’t you?” you ask. How dearly you remember of the cruelty of the Ancients’ condescending pity when she professed her love for food she can never taste.
“Everything is best when running smoothly.” The touch of subtle resentment in his voice rings familiar to all the times you’ve heard him speak of this world of his he loves and the people whose society he has come to hate. “No indulgences, not when it comes to our creations. Already did I give her so much that the committee would find fault in. Sentimentalities they find superfluous.” His head dips from you, his face hidden by his mask but his voice betraying him in his fury turned toward both those around him and himself. “For all I claim them to be flawed, I still followed their teachings. Even though I had no intention of sharing her creation with them, I listened to their criticisms in my mind. Thought myself foolish for giving such a wonderful creature silly trappings of our own existence and burdening her with our banalities.”
As he murmurs in rich, graceful tones made rough with emotion, you reach up toward him. His mask is cold in your hands as you take it from his face. Its rounded sides bite into your skin. Surprised, Hermes looks up at you from his reverie. His lips part without speech. A quiet, sad laugh tumbles from you unbidden. “You can’t think of everything. Even you.”
Confusion passes across his features, his face so very full of emotion, revealing his every thought without his mask to hide it all away. For all the ancients play at being god, his boyish expressions betray how truly sheltered they all are. “I should,” he whispers. “As overseer of Elpis—“
Your hand seeks his. You shake it lightly, loosely jostling him as though to free him from his thoughts. Warmth bleeds into your hand where his skin brands your own, thick lightning ever-present as his vulnerability is made bare beneath your touch. Ancient and ageless, deific ender of worlds through his hubristic calamity, Hermes feels so very mortal when your fingertips brush over the bones in his hand that resemble those of any man, save made larger by the same Ancient blood that makes his eyes shine. He watches you, captivated, and glances down at your hand on his. You release him swiftly. “You’re one person. It’s not our mistakes that define us, but how we act when we’ve made them.”
Hermes settles beside you on the blanket, drawing closer so that your conversation feels more intimate than before. He tilts his head as he looks down toward you. “Are you familiar with the Kyparissi ampelou?”
“Likely by another name,” you jest. “Is it a popoto?”
“Popo… No, not at all.” Amusement dances across the lines of his expression as he gazes at you. His gaze reminds you of G’raha Tia’s, always staring deep into your eyes as though they might find stardust lurking somewhere in your mind. Thinking you unique, not strange but otherworldly. “A flower. It grows hardy in hard soil. Adversity rarely offers it any challenge, because its roots know how to find purchase and flourish when pained by hardship and loss.”
“You like flowers, for all the pain Meteion says they like causing you.”
“Ah!” A surprised laugh tumbles from him, and he turns his head sheepishly away with a smile playing subtly along his mouth. “Perhaps she is right.” His gaze returns sidelong to you, his sincerity overflowing. “The Kyparissi ampelou has a heart of its own, and a will stronger than iron. So well does it grow when it wishes, and nothing can stand in its way. Yet we cannot pot it, nor force it grow somewhere new. It refuses to bend for others’ desires.”
You reach out your hand to lightly touch his once more, squeezing it by instinct to offer him comfort despite how his gaze, so intent on your own, holds none of its prior strength. “You like when life finds ways to live for no reason other than its own existence. You said so, before.” Quietness lingers in your voice, and he leans closer to hear you. The scents of ink and paper cling to him, his work so important to him, yet so does the perfume of flowers and a slight hint of apples. His eyes are darker at the closer angle. The shadows make their unnatural hues vibrant in ethereal beauty. His mortal nature twines with that of his Ancient heritage, a god to those of the future yet a man beside you in this distant past. “You like flowers, because they’re only there to look pretty.”
The elegance of his voice, so rich and rounded as all those of his people, whispers his words in hushed tones as though the rest of the world isn’t meant to hear what is only meant for you. “Not the Kyparissi ampelou. It… is beautiful, but it is not for our hands. It is so much more, and that we might watch its beauty is a gift it offers by its whim. Capricious and wild in where it chooses to grow. Adventurous as a new dawn.”
You startle, realizing you still hold his hand. You release it swiftly, and you laugh, breathlessly airy. “We call this personification, Hermes.” His hand catches your wrist. Words fail. Warm fog fills your thoughts as time melts into a murky liminal space where all moves slow, inevitability slowly washing over you.
His willowy fingers curl around your wrist, tantalizingly warm. Callouses adorn their lengths where a pen might be held. You have never thought of such things before — that an Ancient, who lives in a lofty world without toil or strife, might have fingers that whisper the story of his life as any Spoken man’s would. A silken pale scar adorns the back of his hand, subtle fang marks from an old monster’s bite. How easy it would be for him to heal it away, and yet he keeps it. He keeps this scar and these callouses that speak of a life he and only he possesses, for there has been no one like him before and you know that none like him will come since.
Those fingers sweep up your wrist to cradle your palm. They dance across your skin, warm as sunlight on soil.
Rich, rounded tones rasp his next words with rough emotions hewn raw from stone. “No.” His gaze meets yours, steady and true. “I speak true.” The low thrum of energy beneath his voice carries the timbre of when Hermes speaks with conviction, his soliloquies familiar both in their instances of kindness and those of his hidden depths of wrath. “Few here can see their wonder. They think them lesser for how different they are from the others. Fools. All of them. So fixated on their supposed superiority, they miss the beauty right before them.”
Your fingers tighten around his. He squeezes back so hard it seems reflexive, his strength subconscious in the face of fervent emotion. “Hermes,” you say, but the words fail you as he leans forward.
Dark strands of hair brush along the sides of his face as his lowered head dips low over yours. Sincerity, open and guileless, shines lambent as sunlight in his eyes. In the same voice of emotional fervor that he would use to condemn the world to suffering, Hermes speaks. “That they cannot see this is an injustice. Is their injustice. Such fools, they spend countless hours codifying such rigid lines between life and aught else that they miss the vibrancy of the life right before their eyes. Such bright, capricious life that cares as no one else can, that lives as no one else does with a kindness and strength that makes all better around them. And such life deserves so much better than how we treat it. How we degrade them with demeaning nomenclature, how we pretend ourselves above them, when it is us who ought be ashamed—”
“Hermes,” you murmur, more strongly this time.
A breath catches in his throat. It wavers, as if afraid his very closeness might make it ghost across your skin, a caress of warmth. “I would ask you forgive me.” The pain of his voice sees his eyes squeeze closed, and his words choke him. “That I was foolish like all the others.”
As his breath shakily inhales, you offer him a moment to gather his thoughts. Your fingers softly match his fierce grip with a kneading of fingertips against his fingers, as though to draw him back to you.
“Selfish as I am,” Hermes whispers, “I would ask much of you. And yet I… cannot find the words. Loathe that in asking what I wish, you might think me owed—”
It is simple, turning your head up to face him. Even more simple to capture his lips with yours, swallowing down the words he means to say before he can hurt himself with them.
He gasps. It allows you to drag your tongue against his, the warmth of him on your tongue addictively sweet. The sheer pleasure of soft lips against your own lulls you drowsy as he shivers into the kiss. His fingers, willowy yet strong, fiercely tremble.
You reach up to cup his face. Your eyes open to see him. Eyes of ethereal, luminous hues so alien to your own stare at you with shattered shards of thoughts lost in a haze of reverence.
“Hermes,” you say, your voice quiet and coaxing. There is chastisement in it, for you can see his uncertainty writ stark across his face. He cannot accept such fortune, for he fears his own iniquities. You have seen firsthand why he does, for the future proves it true. He is a man capable of cruelty unimaginable and resentment fierce enough to consume both himself and those around him. Yet he could be so much more, if only the others could see his suffering — and he let himself accept the hands of kindness held out to him. “Ordinarily when I kiss someone, they leave their thoughts long enough to remember it.”
Hermes shakily laughs, the sound as bright as a baby bird seeking to spread its uncertain wings. His warm palm mirrors yours as he cradles your cheek. Those hands that have unmade countless beings and mourned each one hold you so gentle, it’s as if he knows how easily you too could be lost. “I wouldn’t know.” The confession holds a sheepish warmth to its admittance, humor light on his ordinarily clever tongue. “Pray forgive me, but I feel as though I’ve never been kissed before.”
Insatiable curiosity rises as it always does, Azem’s successor that you are. You study his face. How young he looks, for all that he must be old beyond measure. “Have you?”
His fingers drift from your cheek, and he cradles the side of your neck gently. Reverence warms his gaze, those bright hues of Ancient eyes alive with emotions as turbulent as the man himself. “Difficult is it to remember,” he whispers, his elegant voice dipping low into teasing. With a kiss to your forehead, he gazes down into your eyes. “For if ever I have been kissed before, then new nomenclature must be found for the here and now.” A quiet chuckle drifts from him as his gaze falls to your lips. “Perhaps I will petition those at Poieten Oikos.”
“Given the names they come up with,” you tease, “maybe don’t.”
There is silence in answer, for his gaze still lingers on your lips. Each syllable spoken seems to hold a new wonder to be studied. His impulses war against him as he struggles for restraint. You feel his struggle in the ferocity of his grasps where his nails bite soft crescent moons into your skin. There is little warning before he fails save for the soft strands of his hair that brush your face moments before his lips meet yours. Ravenously starved, his kisses are desirous and heated in all the ways the man locks behind his precious facades and mask.
You tumble backwards. The blanket beneath you is scratchy yet soft, for all it had seemed ordinary upon first arrival. A thought crosses your mind — is he a glutton for comforts, lonely as he is? — before his kisses steal away thought and replaces your mind with warm cotton. Gentleness has always been his wont, but deep down he is a man of passion and fire. The same man who would burn the world for its iniquities. Whose emotions turn the sweet lamb into a vicious beast. Ravenous, he kisses you with roughness and sweetness in turn. Brutal claims of lips and bites of flesh melt into his tongue licking into your mouth in soft demand, and then they change once more; lust makes him lost in you.
Your hands drag at his robes, hauling him close. They do not suit him, these unremarkable stretches of dark fabric. His people wear their ubiquitous robes to scorn the impropriety of individuality, a mindset that has cursed to him feel lesser for his own differences. You would have him own his indentity, so that he might blossom in adversity instead of crack. He will not be healed this day, not by the satiation of desires and the reassurance of your gentle touch. Yet this is the first step of many, and perhaps one day his wounds will remember how it feels to heal. “Have me,” you tell him. It is permission as much as it is a demand.
Hermes laughs. His rich voice is airy and bright. Disbelievingly elated. “I confess,” he whispers. Playfulness dances on his tongue. The strong lengths of his fingers tip beneath your chin. “Rather would I be yours. Kept safe in hands that know grief and kindness in equal measure. A thousand lives I could live. Never returning to the star. And of all the world only you could hold me so easily in your palm, without even knowing.”
Your fingers stroke the solid line of his neck. They tangle in his robes, drawing them down enough for you to trace your knuckles along his skin. “Is that what you’d like?”
Hermes hesitates, his eyes wide with surprise. For a moment he watches you in silence. “Yes,” he breathes. His hand cups your jaw as he drags you up into a searing kiss. A sound escapes him as your fingers thread through his hair to keep him close. Deft fingers secure along your side, kneading your waist, as he drags you up into him. “Please, yes.”
He melts beneath your touch, and you guide him closer where he leans over you. The soft billowing of his robes melts into the hard, hot planes of his chest and legs as you guide him close. Rough, messy kisses alight along your neck as you guide his head downward. They have too much teeth, their bite pinching the skin in a way more clumsy than alluring. Once more, your insatiable curiosity gets the better of you.
“Hermes. Have you done this before?”
The man huffs a laugh against your neck as he buries his face against your skin. The curve of his smile burns warm like a brand, his happiness in this moment searing you like a promise and threat alike, a gift that could either last or fade in the years to come. “Do not ask me such a thing. How terrible must I be, that you would ask me this?” Hermes kisses your neck near the crook of your shoulder, more carefully this time, and he sucks the skin up between his teeth before laving the skin with his tongue as if to soothe the sharp bite into soft pleasure. Ethereal eyes with luminous hues look up at you, seeking approval as much as sharing humor.
“Better,” you tease with a stroke through his hair. You feel him shiver pleasantly beneath your touch. How powerful you are, that he would react so strongly to a mere filtering of his soft hair between your fingers, your nails lightly scraping his scalp.
“Such torment you bring me. Witholding your praise.” Playfulness dances through his voice, glimpses of the man who became stuck in a tree chasing an errant creation. His fingers hitch along your thigh before drawing up your robes so they spill like ink about your hips. “Then I’ll need to work harder. Enough to win all the praise you have to give.”
You slide your fingers through his hair, parting the strands so they fall haphazard before his eyes. You rumple them further, so that you can watch as this untouchable, ancient man becomes boyish before your eyes. As you part your thighs, his hand kneads against your hip with anticipation.
“How beautiful you are,” he whispers, and his lips close around the center of your throat, his tongue pressing against the hidden heartbeat there as if he could memorize its beating strength. “That someone such as you exists…” His nose nudges against the underside of your face. Reverent, open-mouthed kisses embrace your jaw as he works his way toward your ear. The warmth of his clever hand traces along your bare thigh, creating goosebumps, before his palm presses against your core. Gone is the tentative man of earlier, replaced by one who knows what he wishes and wants you to bid him take it. His exploratory touches quest between your thighs as though learning an instrument by touch instead of sight. Curiosity bids him to chase your responses, hungry for each sound that tumbles from your lips.
Hermes is worshipful as he prays at your altar, and you are the Twelve’s mirrored Azem, made flesh so he might drag you deep into sin.
(Perhaps in time you will help him find his way out, as well.)