Rise and Shine

"Oww," Strife moaned piteously, his head feeling like it had been beaten with a large slab of meat, quite possibly the whole carcass. Crawling out from underneath the bed sheets as far as he could be bothered he rotated his neck and yawned. He groggily rubbed his eyes and went to look to the pitcher by his table to see if there was any nectar left, only there was a body blocking his view.

A sleeping, immortal body.

His curiosity getting the better of him, he lifted the corner of the blanket, cocked an eyebrow, and promptly put it down again.

He began to smack his lips slowly together, trying to sort everything out. He looked down between his propped up elbows and incredulously realized he was just as naked. Not such an unusual state of dress for him when he emerged from a stupor, but having a nude goddess next to him added a completely different dimension. He continued to smack his lips together as he looked back and forth between the two of them and contemplated the possibilities. It took a moment but glimpses of the night before started coming back to him. He abruptly stopped smacking.

Wonderful, hot, sweaty sex if memory served. A rush of euphoria swept over him and Strife began to giggle in exhilaration. He bobbed his head and rolled his shoulders back and forth in a horizontal victory dance. *I. Got. Laid!* his mind sang jubilantly.

Deimos was going to turn green! Fatuus was going to, well, pretty much be Fatuus, but still! And Ares! Ares was going to be so... absolutely livid.

Everything seemed to come crashing down around him with the sudden, horrified realization. Damn. Damn. Damn! Why hadn't this occurred to him earlier, preferably before he'd taken her back to the temple and torn her clothes off? How had he let this happen?

Too much ceremonial wine was the obvious answer. The two of them had gotten into a squabble over something trivial; nothing new there. But the alcohol and the arguing had somehow caused a chain reaction. One moment they were pushing on one another in a friendly 'are not/are too' quarrel, and the next they had their lips and their hands all over each other.

He'd pushed her up against a wall, tossed his goblet aside, and shoved his tongue down her throat. In the meantime she'd grabbed at his hair, his leather, whatever she could get a decent grip on and pulled him roughly into her. They'd kissed and bit, sucked, scratched, and licked until he'd flashed them back to his place where they did all the same things, only horizontally and without clothes.

Strife shifted his hips uncomfortably; recalling the events leading up to when they'd finally collapsed in exhaustion was obviously not the smartest move right now, especially if he wanted to keep lying on his stomach. *Think of Unc." he firmly told himself. *Angry, angry, Uncle Ares who will blast you into the next eon if he finds out. Or Deimos. Think of Deimos. Naked.* He shuddered violently. *No,* he amended, *just think of Ares.*

The War God had a thing for this particular goddess. Or at least he might. Strife couldn't be completely sure, with his uncle it was often hard to tell. But every time she showed up Ares' blood pressure seemed to rise. They fed off each other, riled one another, she stood up to him and he didn't like it. The two of them fought even more than she and Strife did, and judging by his own reaction to her the night before he could guess what his uncle's might be. If it was one thing the two gods had in common it was a taste for tart-tongued women who, when pushed, would come back with a shove.

*But,* he thought with a sudden burst of inspiration, *Ares doesn't have to know.* After all, wasn't he always telling Strife how uninterested he was in his personal life? Besides, he was so wrapped up in his plotting to make Hercules miserable he wouldn't notice if an obelisk fell through the temple roof, let alone if a certain irritant he might have the hots for spent the night with his nephew.

*All I have to do is make sure she's outta my room and back in her own when he comes looking for me. Which is like, next to never unless he's got some half-brother slaying ideas. In which case he's in a good mood already. Brilliant! Strife you are a genius!* He rolled onto his back and sighed in relief, then glanced over at his still slumbering bedmate with a hungry smirk. *A naked genius with a lustworthy, equally naked, girl in his bed.*

He reached over and gave her a poke, deciding, if she was even half as turned on by his cleverness as he was, maybe they could fit in a few encores before they had to put his plan into motion. "Wakie Wakie," he coaxed, leaning over to blow on the back of her neck. "Time to get up. I already have. Pun intended."

"Come on." Strife pulled the sheets back down and pressed a good-natured kiss to where her cheek met her ear, giving a little purr against her skin for good measure. "Rise and shine Discord."