Work Text:
In the summer of 1969, New York record shops begin selling pre-sale tickets to a concert titled “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music.” Advertisements are placed in “underground” newspapers like The Chicago Seed, with the price of admission being $6.00 per day.
Experts estimate no more than 50,000 will be sold. They realize just how wrong they are when they sell thrice as many. And so, the begin preparations for the 186,000 people expected to be in attendance.
(They don’t know it’ll be remembered as the most legendary music festival in history.)
They realize just how wrong they are for a second time when on August 15th, 500,000 people cheer before an unfinished stage in Bethel, New York. In wet, muddy shoes, they stand shoulder to shoulder, their eyes blown wide as Orange Sunshine melts on their tongues.
The air is heavy with tobacco and hemp, and voices ring out with a feral sort of excitement that hasn’t been known to mortals for thousands of years.
In the middle of the crowd, Dionysus sways, gilded rhyton of aged Limnio in one hand, and a fistful of hair in the other. A nameless body gasps and rolls its hips in time with Dionysus, wine spilling between their two mouths. Each motion catches the fabric of his chiton between them, hiking it higher until the body against his practically melts, mindlessly rutting against his bared thigh.
Rain drenches them both, and the August air does nothing to keep one's clothes from clinging unpleasantly. The image, though, is one Dionysus appreciates immensely. Their white shirt leaves nothing to the imagination, showing every hardened muscle, every soft curve.
His bull-carved chalice tips the vermilion drink into a mortal mouth, desperate to accept the blessing. Wine spills down the corner of their lips, painting the shirt with blessed rivulets.
They moan, throat bobbing as they struggle to drink all of what’s been offered. Sputtering and choking, their voice catches further when Dionysus licks clean the fallen droplets and smiles against the stained lips.
He places a hand on the body’s hip pressing hard enough to bruise, fingers dipping beneath the waistline of their clothes. Dionysus croons sweet nothings against their neck, denying them the touch of his hand where it is so desperately craved. Broken whines are music to his ears, as are the soft, strangled noises and wet gasps from the wine poured faster than it can be swallowed.
Dionysus scrapes his teeth against their throat, running a thumb up the line of its windpipe. Wine pours across his own face, dripping from the open mouth—a libation of his own making.
Wild frenzy calls to him, and he relishes the taste of mortal blood mixed in his wine. Hooked on the pleasures of the flesh, his partner writhes beneath his hands. With their face raised towards the sky, their voice echoes—broken, desperate, addicted to the touch that makes honeyed lines of pleasure drip like sweat down their skin.
Then, with a bright laugh, the god pulls back and revels in the sounds of their frenzied cries.
As Dionysus allows himself to be swallowed by the crowd, he glimpses a shirtless young man with wine-stained lips, stumbling down onto a picnic blanket to kiss a girl that’s just as hazy-eyed and loose-limbed as he is. They’re two of many bodies enveloped in an iridescent sheen of purple that makes their skin tingle and their mind float.
Mortal after mortal, hands reach his way without even realizing. They draw the god in for kisses and mouthfuls of ambrosia-laced wine. Wandering fingers find themselves mussing dark curls and tracing the curves of his hips and waist and chest. They know not who he is, and yet they murmur litanies of prayers against his lips with half-dissolved tabs of acid still melting on their tongues.
Bright, crudely painted nails tear into his chiton, skimming their fingertips just below the hem of the garish leopard skin. He wears a crown woven with ivy, his purple eyes bared for those who can see through the Mist. If they think it a strange fashion, the god pays them no mind, for who are they to judge this indulgence of nostalgia? His Maenads no longer surround him, but he flits through a frenzy of ecstasy nonetheless.
Dionysus feasts on the breathless devotion of mortals who he doubts have even heard his name before; on the moans that can barely be heard over the cacophony of singing voices; on the whispered prayers and hazy visions hoping to worship from between the thighs of the man woman Divine Creature before them.
He’s about to drift away once more when warm fingers skim over his shoulder. A young woman dressed in bright florals stands before him. She looks like every other girl he’s kissed tonight, with bangles halfway up her forearm and rings on every other finger. Her heavy black makeup has been smudged by sweat and rain, but as he takes a closer look at her face, Dionysus notices a certain clarity in her eyes.
Unlike the other mortals, she doesn’t blindly pull him into her embrace. She takes a moment to look, her gaze shamelessly roaming his body, and then she reaches up.
The paisley cape she wears is tugged off to reveal a massive leopard face decorating her chest. The tattoo is adorned with grapevines and figs and clusters of berries that he knows with just a glance are meant for him, and him alone.
She takes a step closer. Then, with a demure smile that fools absolutely no one, the mortal sinks to her knees and finally,
Dionysus feasts.