"Night Into Day"

By Aresbitch

Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit

Summary: A different ending for OAHAF

Rated NC-17 for sexual descriptions.

~~

The dark is broken by the moon coming in through the splintered window slats; slashing blue light across Xena’s sleeping form.

Ares lies next to her, tracing the lines of her beauty with his gaze. She has such a noble profile, like Roman royalty and yet she’s savage – Thracian blood running hot in her veins, the need for violence like a perfume on her fragrant skin.

Her long fingered hands has delivered so much death to those around her, even Hades stood in awe of the Warrior Princess.

But he sees now the furrow of a frown across her brow, the way her lethal hands twitch in her sleep. She’s plagued by dreams of death, hearing the screams of her dead.

Morpheus and Phobetor loved her too, for feeding them so well.

Reaching out, he traces the line of her shoulder down to her arm, and watches the goosebumps rise up behind his touch. He smiles, knowing that despite her protests to the contrary, he affects her.

But she’ll never allow herself that love, not with him.

Frowning, his hand falls away and rolls onto his back, draping an arm across his eyes.

Gabrielle snores softly on his other side, a warm weight that niggles at him like a splinter under his skin.

He turns his head and gazes at the top of her head. She’s a restless sleeper, rolling over onto him twice. To his delight, Xena always stirred to roll her friend back off.

“Ares,” Xena drawls in a tired voice. He turns his head on the pillow.

“Yeah?” he whispers in reply.

“Stop thinking so much. It’s keeping me up.”

That’s a lie, he thinks. He’s not keeping her awake. Her dreams do that. But he lets it go, aware that she’s never in a mood to discuss her past.

“Sorry,” he says instead.

She sighs restlessly and moves again, trying for another comfortable position. Her scent drifts up from the disturbed covers, tantalizing his senses and he finds himself getting hard. Turning to face the back of her head, he stifles the urge to touch her.

Unbidden, memories rise from the shadows and corners of his mind and he sifts through them, a millennium’s worth.

She seems to have been there forever.

He doesn’t think there will ever be anyone else for him and that makes him more afraid then he can ever remember feeling before.

She sighs again and rolls over to glare at him. He lifts his head from the pillow a little, surprised by the rancor in her gaze. He’s done nothing, behaved himself like a good little mortal boy and still she finds a way to look at him as though he were responsible for the fall of Troy.

Well, actually –

“Do you have to breathe so loud?” she snarls, throwing back the covers and getting out of bed. He watches as she stomps out of the bedroom in her underwear.

Gabrielle snorts softly and rolls over, hitting his thigh with her wrist.

Glaring at the sleeping bard, he removes her hand and gets up to follow Xena.

Closing the bedroom door as softly as he can, he follows her to the kitchen.

She’s standing by the broken doorway, watching the eastern horizon.

“It won’t be light for another hour yet,” he tells her quietly.

She turns to face him, confusion and anger visible in the brackets around her mouth.

“I know,” she replies, and turns back. He pauses, unsure of her mood but then walks over to her. The planks on the floor are stripped and weathered, rough on his bared feet.

As a god, he never had to worry about splinters. Now he’s careful where he walks.

Because he has to be.

Mortality sucks, he thinks, gazing at the back of her head. But if she stays with him, if she gives him even a little sign that she feels the same way he does, he’d happily pry splinters from his feet for the next fifty years.

“Xena,” he whispers softly, reaching out to touch her shoulder.

The touch spurs her in some way and she shudders and turns to face him again.

The longing in her eyes, the conflict, is completely unexpected and he gapes at her.

“You never know when to leave well enough alone, do you?” she asks rhetorically, taking a step towards him. “Always there, always pushing, never understanding that when I say you’re bad for me, I mean it.”

Breaths coming harshly, she reaches up and cups his jaw, almost crying.

“You don’t fit into my life, do you understand that? I can’t have you and be the person I am – you’ll infect me like a sickness. With you, wrong will become right, and I am too dangerous with that kind of philosophy, Ares.”

She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself more than she’s trying to convince him, and he takes the hand cupping his jaw in his, stroking the skin between her thumb and forefinger.

“Xena,” he whispers. “Did you ever think that while you were busy worrying that I’d change you…you were changing me?”

Her eyes widen with surprise and it breaks his heart that she never saw the change she inspired in him.

“Why are you so surprised?” He asks, hurt growing exponentially. “Haven’t you noticed what you do to me? How many rules I’ve broken for you? I helped you kill my family, Xena.”

To his horror, he’s near to crying and takes a step back, blinking rapidly to dispel the water gathering.

Gods do not cry.

She follows him, stepping into his space.

“You’re not a god anymore, Ares,” she tells him, seeming to have read his mind.

Then she reaches up and opens her mouth over his, swallowing his tears.

Her mouth is sweet, her breath like mint leaves and he groans like he’s dying, gathering her up before she has a chance to think about what she’s doing. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, hands coming together at the nape of his neck, and legs wrapping around his hips.

Like that the fire between them flares and rages out of control, consuming sense and caution. He holds her up by cupping her ass and shoves her against an ancient table where meals were had and children raised.

Setting her down, he pushes until she’s flat against the surface and stares down at her.

“I want you,” he whispers urgently. “Now.”

Hands reaching for her underwear, he burrows beneath with his fingers and encounters her heated flesh.

She’s wet.

Already.

For him.

She reaches up and he falls on her, mouth opening over hers and her tongue licking his teeth. He’s hard and it hurts and then she reaches down and grabs him and it hurts even more. The kind of hurt that leaves him breathless and gasping, surging into her palm, eager for her.

“I love you,” he whispers against her lips and kisses her again so he doesn’t have to hear the silence following his declaration. She strokes him with her hand and with her tongue, making the back of his head fire with an ancient need to fuck, to claim his woman and leave his mark on her, in her.

He’s been a god for over three millennia and never has he felt like this, so overcome by desire and lust and love the way he is with her.

Always hers.

Always you, he thinks.

She tugs his sleeping garment down while he cups her mound and spears her with his finger, making her arch from the table with a gasp he swallows. The flesh of her neck and chest turns pink with risen blood and he breaks the kiss between them to trail his mouth down over the stain, licking and sucking her flesh as though it were ambrosia.

Cupping her breast in his other hand, he plays her like an instrument, stroking until her eyes nearly close and her mouth opens in an oh of pleasure.

He smoothes his thumb over the nubbin at the top of her mound and she spasms once, heavily, and honey pours over his hand.

“You can do better than that, Xena,” he whispers against her breast and strokes again.

She spasms again, gasping into the predawn air, and long fingers wrap around his throat, pushing him until he straightens up. His cock, heavy with blood and need, bobs loose from his garments and she grasps it with her other hand while she pushes him a step back and hops off the table.

“I wanna play too,” she whispers with a wicked smile.

He smiles down at her, and when she pushes him into a chair, he drops down.

Waiting.

Holding his gaze, she strips off the bare bit of cloth covering her mound and then unhooks the garment covering her breasts.

His breath leaves him all over again at the bare perfection of her body.

Straddling his chair, she lowers herself until the tip of his erection touches her hot flesh.

“Ready?” she asks, looking into his eyes. The question has more depth to it than just the obvious, but right now all he can think about is how she feels and nods. She cups the sides of his neck and bends a little, kissing him while she sinks down onto his cock.

He groans again, her heat scalding him, and deepens the kiss, ravenous for her. He wraps his hands on her hips, grasps her firmly and moves her up and down, up and down, his toes curling from the silky, hot feel of her.

Xena throws her head back and gasps loudly, and he leans forward and kisses his way down from her neck to her chest as he fucks her, mouthing her nipples as they bob gently in and out of range.

Leaning into him she holds him around the shoulders, kissing his mouth, his cheek, biting his ear.

Dawn breaks over the distant mountains and the cloak of stars fade, giving way to day.

Ares moves faster, slamming his hips up into her as she grinds down, trying to take everything he’s giving. When he reaches between their bodies and strokes her nubbin with his thumb, she jerks hard in his arms and comes, the contractions of her body tightening her flesh around his cock until he breaks apart at the seams, burying his face in her throat as he trembles and fills her.

Spent, she slumps in his arms and he holds onto her still, mindlessly stroking her back as he pumps in small jerks. When there’s nothing left for him to give her, he stops and kisses her skin, goosebumps rising along his shoulders and arms.

Silent for as long as it takes to get their bearings, she finally raises her head.

He does the same, and waits for the recriminations now that the urgency has passed.

The morning sun peeks through the cracks in the walls, spilling in through the windows, flooding the kitchen with light.

“I always knew it’d be this good,” she whispers, smiling weakly.

Sweat dots her upper lip and along her temple, her hair damp against her head.

He takes her in, then her words register and he smiles playfully, joyfully.

“Told ya.”

She buries her face in his neck, laughing softly, and he closes his eyes as he hugs her.

Maybe there’s a chance, he thinks. Better than one in a billion.

He opens his eyes and gazes at the table that held their weight, and imagines their children eating there.

~end~

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