Page 13 of Hercules

“You mean to start catching flies, Aphrodite?” He added context to the quip by leaning over to close the woman’s mouth with a gentle nudge to her jaw. Lois forgot all about his hair, now fascinated with the eloquent strength of his extended fingers.

All right, not exactly forgetting. It was just a new addition to the growing list of aspects that entranced her about the man. The mysteries wouldn’t stop flying at her. Why were he and his sister calling each other by gods’ names, despite the perfect fit of the assignations? Since he wasn’t really a god, what did he do that gave him such powerful but poetic hands? Where was he from? How had he just appeared in here? And most intensely, what had caused the sadness behind his ongoing acerbity?

The sorrow that haunted so many depths of his gaze…

“Are you after flies, brother?” The woman’s comeback to his quip was likely joined by a saucy hand to one hip, though Lo couldn’t look to confirm the theory. She couldn’t tear her stare away from the collaboration of masculinity and beauty in the strong aqua gaze that had swiveled to focus solely on her. “Because she isn’t one.”

“I’m…aware.”

His pause, so slight, was all Lois needed to hear. To feel. The vibrations of what he meant beyond the surface of the syllables. Of how thoroughly they applied to what she was doing to him, not just the other way around.

Most awesomely, what he might be intending to do about it.

“I…guess I’m glad.” She remembered to wrap it with Nat’s inflections at the very last second. In no other moment did she hate and love this disguise at once. Her Natasha side lent the courage to give him a dazzling grin, but it was also she who received the small wave of answering warmth across his face.

“You’re also Natasha Korra, right?”

“Huh?” A light laugh, again added in the bare nick of time. “Uh, yes. That’s right. That’s me. The one and only. You’ve got her. Right…here…”

And so much for the shelter of the role play. The trail-off was the most unNatasha choice she could make, but neither sibling looked wise to her misstep. Damn good thing, since she wasn’t ready to get back into character yet. Not with this man’s fingers now making their way along the bottoms of hers, trailing as if he wasn’t going to stop until he brushed the center of her palm. Would she let him? Could she, knowing he was only interested in the femme fatale she was portraying and not the woman she truly was? A woman who suddenly felt all of thirteen years old, hiding behind a blush and braces as Joe Morone shined three seconds of a smile at her across the school library.

“Why, yes. She certainly is here,” crooned the event’s mistress with knowing inflection. “Ready to begin the speed dating fun, but with no one to help get things started. I’m so sorry, Ms. Korra. I suppose you’ll have to wait until—”

“I’ll do it.”

Aphrodite brightened, but not without checking herself. Clearly, she still didn’t fully believe her brother’s offer. “Herc? Really? You will?”

“All for a good cause, right?” he returned, sliding those incredible fingers a little higher. Holy shit. If he really did get all the way up to Lois’s palm, she didn’t know if she could be happy with a mere conversation for this thing. Thankfully she was a pro at hiding the machinations of her imagination behind a neutral smile.

“…Ms. Korra?”

“Errr, huh? I—I mean hm?” She saved the comeback by adding a Nat-style smirk at the last minute, but scrambling for it meant veering her concentration from the man at her side for a few seconds. Moments he took full advantage of, inching over a little closer. Not by much, but by enough.

No. Not nearly enough.

If her wavering lips betrayed her bloodstream’s blare, the god man at her side didn’t inform her. “I asked if you were game,” he murmured instead, adding a smooth nod toward his sister. “The big boss actually gave us permission to grab one of the tables on the patio, if you’ll be more comfortable.”

A frown took hold of her own face before she could finish following his new indication. “Patio?” she uttered. “Aren’t we underground?”

“Ah,” the woman interjected. “So your beauty hasn’t robbed all her brain cells, Herc.”

“Yet.” Though his lips barely left their firm set, his eyes twinkled like gems through his big sibling wink.

And right there, right then, Lois was officially enchanted.

And was resigned to letting him see it all as soon as they walked around a small corner and through an opening in clear glass walls, to what indeed resembled an outdoor addendum to the nightclub. But in Tinseltown, no illusion was impossible. As Lo followed her towering escort to their table, she looked around at real plants in dark brick planters, surrounded by white pebbles that glowed beneath a blacklight moon and a silk star firmament. Eucalyptus and night jasmine scented the air. All of it felt so real.

So magical…

“Wow,” she whispered, only to be her own interruption a few seconds later. “Oh…whoa!”

The dark crimson bricks also comprised the patio’s floor—a factor that never fully registered due to her head in amazed clouds and her feet in stilt-high platforms.

Not until the toe of her right shoe caught a brick’s edge with unnervingly full force.

Her tumble was inevitable.

“Whoa, whoooaaa!”