shanastoryteller:

Zeus claims the sky as
his domain, free and open and pure, and his it becomes.

Hades goes to the
underworld, and it’s messy and horrible and heartbreaking, but he claimes it
uncontested, and his it becomes.

Poseidon goes to the sea,
but it already has a sovereign.

~

His first though is that
she’s beautiful. Skin the color of pearls and hair the dark, rich green of
seaweed. She’s tall with the type of aristocratic bone structure that would
make him think her delicate if not every other aspect of her was as fearsome as
Hera at her most irritable.

“You come to my land
seeking to make it your own,” she says, and she’s not quite walking and not
quite swimming as she circles him. “Who are you to rule the sea?”

He clears his throat, and
he’s a powerful god, he and his brothers are the most powerful gods that still
exist on this earth, but his knees shake before her. It’s not a good feeling. It’s
not infatuation – it’s fear. “I am Poseidon.”

She tilts her head, and
her pretty blue eyes are as cold as sea floor they stand in. “Goodbye, Poseidon.
Perhaps your brother will be able to find what’s left of your corpse in his
underworld.”

The water whips around
him, doing its best to rip him apart, forcing itself into his lungs and
suffocating him. He didn’t think he could drown, but he might be about to be
proven wrong.

Then a net closes around
him, pulling him up so he breaks through the surface and takes a large,
grateful gulp of air. He’s hauled over the side of a boat and dumped on its
floor, the person who saved him wildly fighting the angry waves. “You must have
really pissed the Lady off,” a light, teasing voice says. Poseidon is still
coughing, his eyes watering and lungs screaming. This boat is going to capsize
and they’ll both die, so he doesn’t get how this person can sound so lighthearted.

Except they’re not. Their
little boat is being expertly handled against the thrashing waves. Poseidon
blinks, and he’s inclined to say the person sailing is a woman, considering the
budding breasts and hips. But the hair is cut short, and the chiton is designed
for a man.

“What’s your name?” he
asks.

“Caeneus,” his unexpected
rescuer answers.

That’s a man name, and
Poseidon opens his mouth to questions it – then closes it again. “Thank you,”
he settles on, “You saved my life.”

Caeneus finally steers
them to land, and Poseidon dismounts to help him pull and anchor his boat to
shore. “Anytime,” he says cheerfully, “What did you do to make the Lady so mad,
anyway?”

“You know her?” he asks,
staring. This man appears to be a mere mortal, yet how could a human know that
woman?

He grins at Poseidon and
points out to the glittering sea. “We all do. She is the ocean itself, and just
as powerful and unknowable. You better be careful not to anger her again – I don’t
know anyone who’s survived her wrath twice.”

“Right,” he says blankly,
even though that’s unavoidable. He’s to be the god of the sea, and if he has to
wrest the mantle of monarch from her corpse then so be it.

Caeneus claps him on the
shoulder, his work-roughed palm more comforting than anything else Poseidon has
known since escaping his father’s stomach. “Come to mine, you look half dead. I’ll
make you something warm.”

He takes a long look at
his savior. Skin a dark shade of brown, and his eyes are amber in the setting
sun. His black hair is cut short, and the muscles of his arms and legs shift
with each moment. “Very well,” he answers, and is inordinately grateful that he’s
too cold to blush.

~

Caeneus takes him to his
home, a hastily constructed shack on the beach’s edge. The wind whips through
the cracks in the wood so that no matter where you stand you’re always chilled.
“This is the worst woodwork I’ve ever seen,” he says. He slides his hand across
the wall and is completely unsurprised when it comes away with splinters.

“I’m a sailor, not a carpenter,”
Caeneus answers, intent on mixing together a bunch of ingredients Poseidon only
half recognizes. “It stay upright.”

“Barely,” he returns,
cupping his hands around the cup that’s shoved at him.

Caeneus doesn’t ask him
to leave. Instead they squeeze onto Caeneus’s too small bed. Poseidon curls around
the smaller man, tangling their legs and tucking Caeneus’s head under his chin.
“You’re so warm,” Caeneus murmurs, half asleep already, and Poseidon’s heart
clenches.

He makes sure he’s asleep
when he carefully, so carefully, lowers his head and brushes his lips against Caeneus’s
cheek.

~

When Poseidon wakes up,
the sun is bright and Caeneus is gone.

He should go marching
back to the ocean, but first he has something important to do. He’s just not
sure how to go about it.

He can’t ask Zeus, his
younger brother knows plenty of war and not much else. Which leaves –

It’s easy enough to slip
into the underworld, although he regrets doing so the second he arrives. It’s
almost completely dark, and lonely. Lost souls are immediately reaching for
him, cold hands brushing against his skin.

“What are you doing?” a
familiar voice demands, and Poseidon nearly wilts in relief when Hades appears
at his side and guides him away from the wailing souls. “It’s not safe here.”

“What’s wrong with them?”
he asks, glancing back, his chest clenching at sympathy at their cries even
though he knows there’s nothing he can do for them.

They slip through the
realm, and they land in front of a partially built stone castle. The goddess Hecate
guides them construction with her magic, her visage that of a young child since
it’s still morning in the mortal realm.

Hades sits on the ground,
and the skin beneath his eyes is dark and bruised. He looks like a strong wind
would blow him over. “Nothing, everything, I don’t know. I’m working on it. Why
are you here?”

“I don’t suppose you know
how to build a house?” he asks, though he doesn’t expect much. It seems he’s
not the only one having trouble claiming authority over his domain.

His brother laughs, eyes
crinkling at the corners. “You’ve come to the wrong sibling, little brother.”

Oh. That’s true. “Do you
think she’ll help me?”

“Yes,” Hades answers,
lips still twitching. “Now leave me to my anarchy, I have more than enough
trouble to deal with without you causing more.”

That’s fair enough.

Poseidon heads to Olympus
next, careful to peer around corners to avoid Zeus and Hera. Their marble
palace is already constructed, and he tamps down on the bitterness that they
rule unchallenged. In the center of the throne room, next to a roaring fire,
sits Hestia.

“Sister,” he greets,
tentative. “I need help building a home.”

She looks from her fire
to him, and when she smiles he feels all his tension drain from his shoulders. “Of
course, little brother. If it is help you require, then it is help you shall
have.”

Hestia tears apart the
shack with a flick of her hands, says, “I’ll ask Demeter for some better wood,”
and is gone and back in the blink of an eye. They build it by hand after that,
and Hestia’s soft voice guides him whenever he hesitates or stumbles. They are
gods, so it doesn’t take too long, and when they finish they have a small,
beautiful house right on the edge of beach, one with a large bed and lots of
light, one with a fire pit in the center that has Hestia’s name inscribed in
the bottom so that she may look over this home she helped build.

“Thank you,” Poseidon
says, the sun beginning to set.

Hestia winks at him, “Anytime,
little brother,” and is gone in the next moment.

He hopes Caeneus likes
it. Unfortunately, he won’t be able to stick around to find out.

He has a queen to
challenge.

~

He finds her again, in
her palace of polished rock at the bottom of the sea.

“There’ll be no helpful
sailor to save you this time,” she says, head tilted to the side. Already the
water is colder around him, the current stronger.

He swallows, “I am
Poseidon. I am to be the god of the sea.”

She glances him over,
unimpressed. “Why do you want it so badly? There is nothing about you that is of
the sea.”

“I am a god,” he answers
blankly, and doesn’t say that it was this or the underworld, and that wasn’t a
mess he was willing to take on.

She snorts, a flicker of
amusement appearing in her emotionless gaze. “You are too soft, and too kind,
to ever be a master of the sea.” He opens his mouth, but she raises a hand, and
he closes it. She takes slow, deliberate steps towards him, and he swallows and
doesn’t look away. “I will make you a bargain, Poseidon, god of nothing.”

“I’m listening,” he
answers, and tries not flinch when she places a cold hand against his chest.

“I am Amphitrite,” she
says, “sister of Gaia, and I have lived long before your conception, just as I
will live long after your death.” Poseidon pales, and oh, he had no idea the class being he was dealing with here. This
is very, very bad. “If you wish to rule the sea, then you must rule me.”

He swallows, “Lady, I – a
thousand apologies, I did not know–”

“Silence.” His mouth
clicks shut. “I was born as I am, and I will die that way. But – I need not
live this way.” He doesn’t understand, and she must see that, because she
touches her own chest and says, “I have a heart as cold and dark as the oceans
I bore. I will give it to you, and I and the sea will be yours to command. But
I require your heart in return, so that I may know kindness and softness.”

He doesn’t know what to
say. Hearts aren’t things to be given away lightly. But he must become lord of the sea.

“Take time, if you must,”
she says, that same cold amusement in her eyes. “I am as immovable as the ocean,
and I will be here when you make up your mind.”

He’s propelled up and
onto the shore, far more gently this time around.

“POSEIDON!” he barely
turns when a body slams into him, and lips press against his. Caeneus pins his
wrists to the sand and kisses him, long and slow and more than distracting
enough to make him forgot about the offer from the personification of the sea
itself. “You built me a house,” he murmurs, “You built me a house.”

“Do you like it?” he
asks, dazed.

Caeneus grins above him,
wicked and beautiful, and rolls his hips into Poseidon’s. “Come with me, and I’ll
show you how much I like it.”

~

Poseidon means to go back
to the sea, to Amphitrite, but every morning Caeneus kisses him good morning.
He learns of the sea, though. He goes out with Caeneus each day and learns it
motions and its temper, the taste and smell of it. Learns how to understand it,
and learns how completely and totally uncaring it is, how the coldness of its
depth is the totality of it.

The sea is not kind. It
has no sympathy, no love, no capacity for such small things as forgiveness or
mercy.

He means to return to
her, but it becomes harder and harder every day.

Days turn to weeks turn
to months. He and Caeneus grow closer, and closer, and Poseidon has no idea how
he’s supposed to turn his heart over to Amphitrite when it’s now held by a
mortal with amber eyes who leaves mouth shaped bruises all along Poseidon’s
collar bones.

“Poseidon,” Caeneus says,
quiet in the oppressive stillness of the night, head on his chest and curled
into his side. The moon is large and high, and pools silver on their bedroom
floor. “You’re a god, right?”

“I am,” Poseidon says,
amused. Caeneus knows what he is, but this is the first time he’s mentioned it.

Caeneus pushes himself up
so he can look down at him, and Poseidon reaches up to cup his face. Caeneus
leans into it, covering his hand with his own. “Could you make me into a man?”

“You are a man,” he says
automatically.

He rolls his eyes and
pulls himself up so he can swing his leg over Poseidon, straddling his hips. “You
know what I mean.”

Poseidon shifts enough
that both their breaths hitch, and he says, low, “No. I’m sorry. I’m not – I have
no domain, and my powers are limited.” He could maybe do it, but transformation is not among his natural talents,
and Caeneus is too precious to risk unless he is certain.

He’s disappointed, but
smiles through it, and leans down to kiss him. “It’s all right.”

It’s not. If Poseidon
were the god of the sea in more than name, if he had taken Amphitrite’s offer,
he would be able to transform his lover like he desires.

He’s a god, brother of
Zeus, and he can’t give Caeneus the one thing he’s ever asked of him. What good
is he, what good is any of his power, if he can’t make the people he loves
happy?

He’s flips Caeneus over
and kisses his neck so his lover won’t see the self-hatred that’s plain on his
face.

~

Poseidon sneaks away in
the middle of the night, presses a soft kiss to his sleeping lover’s slack mouth,
and enters the ocean.

“You’ve decided then?”
she asks, head tilted to the side.

“I will not be a loyal
husband,” he declares, back straight. “I love Caeneus.”

She laughs, and for the
first time he’s not afraid of her. “Do with your mortals what you wish. It’s no
concern of mine.”

“Okay,” he says, and
steels himself. “Okay. I accept your offer Amphitrite, sister of Gaia.”

She holds out her hand,
nails more like claws, and tears open her own chest without flinching. Her
blood slick and dark as it pours from her, swirling in the water around them
She pulls a dark, round thing from her chest and holds it out to him.

“I,” he looks down at his
chest, and he doesn’t – he’s not sure if he can do what she’s done, and he
would feel foolish asking for a knife.  She
steps forward and places her hand with its claws against his chest, slippery and
warm with blood, and cuts open his chest for him.

It’s excruciating, and
his knees buckle against the pain of it. Amphitrite holds him up, and waits.

She can’t to this part.
It has to be him. He reaches inside his chest and pulls out his heart, beating and
warm. He clumsily places it in her chest. It’s startlingly, violently red
against the dark green color of the rest of the inside of her. She does the
same, slipping her own heart into his chest.

Their skin heals over
instantly. Amphitrite’s mouth drops open, and her cheeks flush pink. She
smiles, small and soft, and for the first time she looks – happy.

Her heart in his chest
cold as ice, and its chill suffuses his body, edging out to fill him entirely.

He can feel the ocean
now, all of it spread across the globe, the tides and the creatures the reside
in it, it’s plants and animals and nymphs. “It’s so much,” he says, and is surprised
at the sound of his own voice, at its curtness.

“You feel only part of
it,” she says, stepping forward, “It is a force too powerful for a god to
control. I am a force to powerful for
a god to control. However, you hold my heart. As I will now obey you, so will
the sea.”

“You could overpower me,”
he says clinically, knows the power she wields by what he can’t feel rather
than what he can.

She presses a hand to his
chest, and they both startle. She’s warm now. She wasn’t warm before. Or
perhaps he has simply grown colder. “I could,” she says, “but I will not.”

He has no reason to trust
her, but he’s painfully aware that he doesn’t have a choice in the matter. “I’m
going to Caeneus,” he says, and a sense of unease grows within him. Even the
shape of his lover’s name in his mouth doesn’t feel the same anymore.

“Do as you wish, husband,”
she turns from him, going deeper into her – their – palace.

This time, he uses his
own powers of the sea to push him to the surface.

It’s not as satisfying as
he thought it’d be.

gods and monsters series part x