#ares;

@ffsares

lucas: hey ares, do you know where to get a suit?

lucas: the only other one i have is from my bar mitzvah

He pulled a face,"I'm trying to save up for the GeForce 1060 right now, for the graphics card. Once I have that, then I'll be able to put it all together!"

It was on the first warm, clear night that spring when, walking home from their respective jobs, Lucas noticed the nearby jungle gym, abandoned.

He glanced to Ares and, with the ghost of a smile on his face, challenged, “Race ya to the top.”

Ares is placid after war. Languid and susceptible to touch, he lingers a little longer in the presence of sunlight- familiarizing himself with the persistence of life- holding onto his humanity. It is though he is relearning how to walk, soft and as close to mortal as he might have ever looked- clean and heavy with sleep. His hair wrapped in tight, unhindered curls around the knife of his jaw, seems handsome and traditional in the stain of morning. Violence, he thinks, despite how often he eagerly drowns in it’s undertow, is perhaps, the farthest from his favorite sort of ‘war.’ Tending to his children is war- watching them solidify and develop with age, navigating through the mistakes of mortals that even gods tended to behind closed doors. 

The plight of women is war- one he watches but would not dare to disturb, tussling with something akin to pride at their conquests. They would not be so easily forgotten, nowadays. Then Apollo, surely. Loving, he thinks, is his favorite sort of warfare. Ebbing and overflowing and consuming in a way that disarms him beyond any absence of a weapon. Perhaps this was the safety they spoke of- the birth right of his disposition. Yes, the battle of Apollo was quite like breathing- easy, like he'd always been intended to do so. 

Abruptly, he stirs, the faint flex of a muscle in his calf coaxing life back into his still frame. Then his eyes, dark and soaked with sleep, drag open, jaw falling flat to suck in a breath. His lips breach into a wide, drowsy grin over his sharp teeth, elicited from Apollo’s features golden and warm across from him. 

Fervor.

Ares hands find Apollo's waist, feel the burn of sunlight beneath his touch and his lips part in a soft hiss, equally pained and betrayed by his own vulnerability as he is enamored by the halo above him. He lets his head fall back, tresses of light framing the bead of sweat lining his brow. How long had they been trapped in this moment? A sweet memory. It'll be over before Ares can enjoy it. Still, he looks nearly soft, encircled by the wave of his overgrown hair, and he smiles, a scarce, genuine pull of his teeth, because he is already doomed. Why not make the most of it?

"I did not imagine it. I wouldn't dare, I—" Ares shoulders pin up around his ears again, reflexively guarding until he steels and coaxes the muscles back down, feigning nonchalance.

"It's better. But there you go again, asking me things you already know. You have maimed me. Does that make you happy?"

Ares, Ares, manslaughtering, blood-stained, stormer of strong walls, is there no way you can go and hold back this man from the fighting, Tydeus' son, who would now do battle against Zeus father? Even now he stabbed in her hand by the wrist the lady of Kypros, and again, like more than a man, charged even against me.

Ares eyes are suffocation, a cataclysmic cyclone of unshed ichor and the white of his eyes nearly swallowed by the deep dark of his pupils. His anger had branded a seam into his side, a hot knife steadily dripping his indignation in a telltale trail of puce on the floor behind him with each step. In fact, he is practically spuming at the mouth like a dog, burning burning burning in his fury, only no— something is not quite right.

There is not rage left when he loads his weight against the threshold of Apollo's domain, steam billowing off his shoulders and the treble of his lower lip, though sewn into a snarl betrayed a deeper agony. He hopes Apollo knows the difference.

"I have done as you asked."