Solangelo Oneshots

Vesuvius is Almost as Big as my Dick

The doors to Hades' palace had stood tall and steadfast for millenia. They were carved in bone and iron with the name of every person to have ever died enscripted on them. No one could ever read the names. They sped by too fast.

The gates were guarded by the best of the best. Warriors had laid down their lives and their afterlives in the name of protection of others. Perhaps it was foolish of them but, without the few, the many could not survive.

Souls drifted listlessly across the river, calling out to the guards to abandon their posts and come save them. Protection did not expand to those who had arrived unprepared. Instead, they faced the crooked grin and the throaty cough of a man as doomed as they were.

So, when the gates burst open with a boom that shook skeletons' finger-bones off and sent the troglodytes scurrying and quietened the raucous souls for just a moment, the Underworld held its breath and ceased its violent moans.

The grand hallway exploded into light.

Souls that had been watching through the windows of the palace covered their eyes in a human instinct of avoiding blindness.

In the centre of the echoing chamber stood a figure. Light seeped through their skin cells, wisps escaping from their body and curling around them.

In his throne room, Hades stood. His robes swept across the floor, gliding down from his obisidan seating. His hair, blackened from despair, was fixed into a bun with a snap whilst his eyes, alight with acceptance, focused on the door.

The door flung open and the wood splintered on impact with the wall.

"I could smite you for that," Hades said calmly.

"But you won't," Apollo retorted, adjusting his crown of laurels.

Hades suppressed a sneer as his guest summoned a chair and flopped into it, contorting himself to have both legs off the ground and dangling off the arm.

"Would you dim yourself?" Hades demanded impatiently. "You're frying my butlers."

Apollo winked at the skeletal butler, whose bones were more than slightly charred, and lowered his light to a flickering glow.

"Sorry, handsome," Apollo addressed the poor thing. The butler quickly turned and fled.

Hades sat again, crossing one leg over the other and scratching along the arms of his throne with yellowed fingernails.

"What do you want, Apollo?"

"For people I date to stop dying on me," Apollo replied, producing a nail file from thin air and admiring his cuticles. "For daddy dearest to get his beard trimmed. Have you seen that thing lately? I nearly put a hat on him and declared him Albus Dumbledick."

"Careful," Hades rumbled, his nails scraping off a thin layer of rock. "You're testing my patience."

"You're no fun," Apollo whined. "What happened to good old Hay-Hay who helped out when I accidentally threw too big of a party in that volcano. You registered all the souls without tattletaling."

Hades grimaced. "That was a disaster and I only helped you because my brother was rather fond of Pompeii and I didn't want another war because of your ludicrousy."

Apollo huffed. "Ludicrousy. That's a big word. Almost as big as Vesuvius. Which is almost as big as my dick."

Hades wrinkled his nose in disgust. Apollo tossed his head back and laughed. His grin walked the sword's edge between boyish and malicious.

"What are you here for?"

Apollo sniffed, tilting his chair to the side until he got two feet on the ground and gracefully rose. The chair vanished before it hit the floor.

"I'm here for our sons."

"Our sons," Hades repeated.

"Yeah, you remember Will?" Apollo asked. "About yay high, great smile, devilish good looks. He takes after me."

"What about the boy?"

"He and Nico want a baby. Like, a screaming, red-faced, defecating baby. Fully functioning. All the bells and whistles. Don't ask me why but they're certain about it. I know because I asked them why, on my beautiful self, they would want one and they were not happy with me."

"I don't see how this concerns me."

"Because, dear Hay-Hay, we are going to make them one."

Hades rose, snuffing out the candles and plunging everything into darkness, except for Apollo. He descended the steps slowly and with the graveness of an priest at a funeral.

"I have two questions for you."

"Shoot, buster."

"Why do you insist on calling me Hay-Hay?"

Apollo snorted. "I watched Moana. There's a chicken called Hei Hei and he reminded me of you."

Hades pressed his lips in a thin line. "Well, then my second question is what is wrong with you?"

Apollo opened his mouth but Hades clamped a hand over it.

"I am the God of the dead," he continued, nostrils flaring and robes billowing behind him. "I give my blessings to humanity through granting rest not beginning."

Apollo pried Hades' fingers off one by one. He tilted his head and smirked.

"I thought you might make an exception for your only child."

Hades glared at him.

For a time, perhaps seconds and perhaps days, there was utter silence.

Hades drew in a sharp breath and turned. He opened a door to the depths of the palace and looked over his shoulder at where Apollo stood still.

"Well?" Hades barked. "I assume you didn't come all this way without a plan."