Bonus Content - RO Scenarios

Hello, everyone!

I'm back with another maybe-if sidestory thing in this slot this month, and in this case, it features Hermes's perspective, and a bit of a grumpy, smart-alecky Seph. Though, that might just be because they're grumpy when they wake up. 

I hope you enjoy it!

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Hermes is a slow waker, if he has his own choice about things. While it might be generally true that he’s not much for sitting around when there might be something fun to do, unlike Pyri, he has his limits.

And one of those is that he prefers his mornings to be leisurely. If he’s bothered to sleep, he wants to enjoy the full experience, and not shift too abruptly between that mode and the next.

Considering that he’s been spending most of his time with Seph lately, it’s hardly surprising that he’s indulging in sleep quite a bit more often, since they kind of have to. But the influence go both ways. Sunshine, early bird that they tend to be, has gotten used to doing a few morning routine things and then crawling back into bed to doze a while with him.

Or, really, whatever dozing-alternative activity takes their fancy.

This particular morning, however, he wakes first, on his back, one wing draped lazily off the side of the bed. Seph is half-on the other one, and half on his chest, tucked into his side with their head resting on his shoulder and pectoral muscle. It’s that weird kind of slightly-uncomfortable where it’s outweighed easily by the pleasure of the closeness, though honestly he can’t completely feel the arm attached to the shoulder they’re on right now and he should probably fix that.

Instead, he moved his free arm under his head, slipping it between his silk pillowcase and the band of the same fabric wrapped around part of his hair, propping his head up and just sort of… it is weird to watch someone sleep? Maybe.

But its not that exactly. He just likes looking at their face, and for the moment he can do so without having to make an excuse for it, or play it off with a flirty joke or whatever. Hermes is slow to sincerity, slow to anything that makes his true feelings known, if those feelings carry with them any sense of vulnerability. Especially if there’s any chance anyone on Olympus might come to know about whatever he’s hiding.

But they aren’t on Olympus right now. They’re in the Underworld, and that makes it much too easy to stop caring about stuff like that. So far, he’s done… pretty well with it. Striking what he hopes is the right balance between letting his Sunshine know that this is different, from what they know he’s done before, with other people, and still giving himself a little bit of the protection lighthearted jibes and over the top flirting grant him. Because he still can’t make himself not do that, for whatever reason.

He thinks they understand, and this is a tremendous relief. Still, any protracted and fond regarding of their visage must be done less than openly, for now.

Hermes has always found them beautiful, even if the exact word he’d use to describe that beauty has shifted over time. When they were kids, Seph was ‘cute,’ and he’d always laughed at the way they sputtered when he said it. It had been true, though, with their wide button nose and the freckles, like a dusting of deep earth spattered across the warm, sun-touched brown of their skin. Their colors have always reminded him of that sort of thing; of the deep, enclosed secrets of the soil, dark and a little mysterious and steady and always, always with so much more to give than he deserves.

It’s there in their lashes, too, a brown between the two others, something like… tree bark? But there are so many colors of that that is almost fails as a description for anything. All he knows is there’s the slightest tone of red to it, and when the sun hits it and shows him all the striations in the color of their hair, he always wants to smile.

Always stops himself, because he knows it would be the dopiest, most open expression, and he can’t let himself do that, but…

Gently, he moves the arm they’re laying on, wincing a little when feeling returns to it in needle-points and a spreading surge of discomfort, but after he flexes his hand a few times, he manages to gently hold the end of a braid. They’ve wrapped their hair to protect it as well, but the bare end of one has escaped its confinement, and he does let himself smile a little ridiculously now, because it looks funny, and he can only imagine them grumbling abut it when they wake up.

The kind of beautiful they are now isn’t a child’s, anymore, and he won’t deny it makes him feel something much different than he did then. Their face is something that might be called ‘handsome,’ in the way soft cheeks can combine with a hard jawline to make something like that, in the way their whole face shows whatever they’re feeling. Hermes has known many kinds of beauty on an intimate level, but theirs is his favorite.

Because it is theirs.

The motion of his arm seems to have stirred them, because Seph makes a disgruntled noise in their sleep, rolling just enough to tuck their face into his shoulder, and he laughs softly.

“Good morning, Sunshine.”

The response is barely coherent, but when he makes out the muffled ‘I hate you,’ he laughs again, louder this time.

“Well, not to be the bearer of more bad news, but one of your braids has gone rogue. Better fix it before we have a hair emergency, hm?”

They roll in the other direction, getting enough distance to narrow their eyes at him. “I’ll give you a hair emergency,” they rasp, reaching for his head with one hand.

The attempt is still sleepy and uncoordinated, but Hermes yelps anyway, diving for the edge of the bed to pull himself to his feet. Or, he would have if they weren’t still laying on one of his wings. Instead, the motion is aborted, and they’re both sort of moved about one-quarter of a bed sideways, Hermes forced to brace himself with a foot on the floor or take a very awkward and slow tumble to the ground.

“I win.”

Seph, well aware of how Hermes feels about his hair, keeps the ruffle very gentle, and mostly to the confines of the scarf, leaving the puffy ball of curls at the top of his head alone.

It’s his turn to grump, folding his arms over his chest. “Only because you cheated. What kind of partner holds a man down by his wings? How controlling!”

Seph rolls their eyes, sitting up with a yawn and stretching their hands towards the ceiling. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t act like you don’t like it.”

The remark, still in their sleepy tone, gets a startled bark of laughter out of him. It’s true, actually, he just never expected them to say it. They’re very tentative about a lot of things that he can talk about much more casually, so to see them settling into it a little makes him happy in a way it’s hard to explain.

This does not, of course, make them immune to retaliation. With his wing now free, Hermes, too, sits up, but then dives sideways, wrapping his arms around their middle and tackling them back down onto the mattress. He lifts both feathered limbs high, mostly out of reach, ‘caging’ them in place with his arms and legs.

“Yeah? What do you like, though?”

He knows the answer to this question maybe a bit better than they do, at least in present context, and so when he lowers his head to gently brush his mouth against their skin, he’s confident about it, pressing just hard enough that he can feel the shift in their pulse with his lips. The somnolent pace of it spikes, just a little, and he feels the little shiver in them that means he has the right kind of attention.

“You look ridiculous,” they grouse, tugging gently at the knot resting against his forehead. He knows they don’t mean it for a second.

“You look ravishing,” he replies, smarm easily asserting itself, “so I don’t care how ridiculous I look.”

He pulls back a little, wearing a big grin, and he knows when they roll their eyes again that he’s won.

But it’s when they lift a hand, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him down for a proper kiss, that he feels like it.