CALLIOPE: After the last episode, you might be thinking that this episode will be a small house party. You would be incorrect, however, as those kinds of things take time to plan, even for gods. Instead, we will be visiting with two duos who grow closer and closer by the day, even if they don’t seem to see it.
Welcome, dear listeners, to Forged Bonds.
We will start our story today beside a punching bag with Ares and Hermes who were wrapping up a bit of boxing.
ARES: You’ve been getting a lot better!
HERMES: You think so?
ARES: Yeah! I don’t have to remind you which punch goes to which number anymore and you seem a lot more confident when you’re hitting for power rather than just for form. And your form has gotten a lot better too! You’re pivoting more and driving way more force than you had been. You should be proud of yourself 🙂
CALLIOPE: The red coloring Hermes’ cheeks could’ve been from the work out, but I think we all know that it was really from Ares’ compliments.
HERMES: Thank you, Ares. I’ve only gotten better because I’ve had a good teacher, though; I wouldn’t be able to do this without you.
CALLIOPE: If you’ll pardon me for interrupting again, dear listeners, it feels important to draw your attention to Ares’ reaction to this as well. The red in his cheeks increased ever so slightly, but enough to draw the eye of your humble narrator. He stood a little bit straighter, smiling with a fondness that is often reserved for lovers. Hermes, in turn, matched the same soft smile of his compatriot, the two of them swaying ever so slightly towards each other before both pulling away, whatever spell they were under seemingly broken. Even as Hermes turned away, though, Ares didn’t take his eyes off of our messenger god.
ARES: (slightly flustered) Well, having a good student helps too, ya know. If I tried to do this with Aph, it wouldn’t go nearly as smoothly.
HERMES: You say that like Aphrodite couldn’t already kick your ass if she wanted to.
ARES: Not at boxing! Dite is a good fighter but I’ve definitely got her beat.
HERMES: (teasing) Hmmm I don’t know, Air, I think she could take you.
ARES: (jokingly indignant) How dare you insinuate that I couldn’t win a fight against Aphrodite! I taught her everything she knows!
HERMES: (teasing) You taught me everything I know, too, and I’m getting close to being able to take you in a fight.
ARES: (teasing) Oh yeah? Is that a challenge?
HERMES: (teasing) You know what? I think it is.
CALLIOPE: Our two gods broke into a fit of laughter, Ares slinging an arm around Hermes shoulder and holding him close. The touch was slightly too affectionate for the faux rivalry they had been enacting.
HERMES: (slightly flustered) I think it’ll take me a little longer to actually be able to beat you. But someday soon we’ll actually have to have that fight. I think I can give you a run for your money.
ARES: Whenever you’re ready, just name the time and place. I’m always down for a good sparring match. Or a bad one, since you’re certain to lose.
HERMES: I don’t know, Air. I mean, if you’re really as good of a teacher as you say you are, shouldn’t I be the one winning that fight?
ARES: Are you trying to reverse psychology me into letting you win?
HERMES: Depends. Is it working?
ARES: You’re lucky you’re cute, you know that?
HERMES: (flustered) Oh so I’m cute now?
ARES: (words catching up with him) I mean… Yeah. Of course you are. (too sincere, reels it back) Thinking you can beat me in a fight? Absolutely adorable.
CALLIOPE: We are going to leave Hermes and Ares here for a moment and move to our other pairing for the day; worry not, we’ll be back with our boys soon. But for now, let’s enter the forge once more and check in on Aphrodite and Hephaestus.
APHRODITE: It’s gorgeous.
HEPHAESTUS: It’s not finished yet, but it’s getting there. I just can’t seem to figure out the face.
APHRODITE: Even without a face, it’s still beautiful. If you wanted to stop now, you could always claim it was an artistic choice or something like that. Everyone would believe you.
HEPHAESTUS: Well you and Di are the only other people who will ever see it and you both know that I want to give her a face. She won’t be complete without it.
APHRODITE: Oh come on, you have to show this to more than just me and Dionysus. He’s wonderful but this kind of art isn’t really his thing, you know?
HEPHAESTUS: I did show Hermes but that was more of a ‘get him to stop gay panicking’ thing. Though he might want to see the finished product, I guess I could always ask him.
APHRODITE: Hermes is gay panicking?
HEPHAESTUS: Sorry, I’ve been sworn to secrecy.
APHRODITE: (faux offense) Wow. I can’t believe you would betray our friendship like this. I thought what we had was special, but clearly I’m just another worthless goddess to you.
HEPHAESTUS: (teasing) I just like Hermes more than you, what can I say?
APHRODITE: (dramatic) A betrayal of the highest order. How will I ever recover?
HEPHAESTUS: (teasing) I suppose you’ll just have to fight Hermes for my affections. Prove that you are the better friend through combat.
APHRODITE: He may be training with Ares but I’ll still wipe the floor with him. Unless Ares has become a better teacher somehow, but I doubt that.
HEPHAESTUS: You and Ares used to fight?
APHRODITE: He thought some self defense lessons could be good for me and I agreed. But for battle training I went to Artemis. I love Ares and respect his position as the god of war but gods know I couldn’t have put up with him being my trainer for that. He would’ve been so annoying.
HEPHAESTUS: Does this mean you can shoot a bow? Should I have been making you arrows this whole time?
APHRODITE: I mean, Eros had to learn how to shoot from somewhere.
HEPHAESTUS: I could’ve been making you arrows this whole time oh my gods. I can’t believe you withheld vital information from me, I could’ve made you so many cool things.
APHRODITE: You don’t have to make me anything.
HEPHAESTUS: 1) It’s not about needing to make something, it’s about wanting to make you something. 2) Yes I do. I definitely have to make you arrows now that I know you know how to shoot.
APHRODITE: I’m fine just stealing them off of Eros–
HEPHAESTUS: You steal your brother’s arrows? Really? Wait, no, that’s besides the point; the point is that I can make you even cooler arrows than those ones. You like the look of damascus steel, right? Imagine damascus steel arrows. I could have so much fun with that. Actually, we’re starting on this right now, come on, put some safety goggles on.
APHRODITE: (laughin) Phae–
HEPHAESTUS: (like an excited child) Safety goggles. Come on. And gloves, wouldn’t want your hands getting burnt.
CALLIOPE: Depending on how easy you are to surprise, it may come as a surprise to you to find out that Aphrodite has her own pairs of goggles and gloves in Hephaestus’ forge. These were gifted early on in their friendship as Hephaestus wanted to bolster Aphrodite’s interest in forging. Our dear goddess of love has mostly watched as her friend created things, but it is always better to be cautious and wear the proper safety gear even when you are not working with molten hot metal yourself.
HEPHAESTUS: So the pattern of it all comes from layering types of metal– you know that, I’m sure I’ve talked your ear off about it. What you’re going to do–
APHRODITE: Me?
HEPHAESTUS: Yeah, you! You’re going to make the base for the arrow, I’ll do the actual shaping since that’s harder. Honestly, Damascus is pretty hard and I should’ve started you with something easier before this but we can’t stop now! I’ve got some steel ingots over here, we’re going to weld them together to make a billet. This isn’t the original way to make Damascus steel, but that’s a lot more complicated and as far as humans are concerned it was lost to the mists of time so we can just do the billet version.
APHRODITE: Okay, so I’ve layered these pieces and now… You want me to weld them? Me? The person who has never done this before?
HEPHAESTUS: You’re perfectly safe with me here, I promise. I’ll be here to guide you the whole way and it’s not like I would ever let anything bad happen to you.
CALLIOPE: It could’ve been the heat of the forge or it could’ve been the warmth of Hephaestus’ words, but both goddesses found their cheeks flushing as Hephaestus made her promise.
This seems like the least appropriate time to pull you away from this scene. Of course, this means I will be drawing your attention back to Hermes and Ares who have cleaned up after their boxing lesson and are now sitting together outside– Don’t worry, we’ll be back to our dear goddesses soon enough.
HERMES: So…
ARES: What’s wrong?
HERMES: Who said anything is wrong?
ARES: People only ever draw out a ‘So…’ like that when something’s wrong. So what’s wrong?
HERMES: I just wasn’t quite sure how to fill the silence if I’m being honest. The boxing took more out of my brain than I thought it would, I’m feeling a little fried.
ARES: You can go home if you want–
HERMES: No! I mean. If you want me to go–
ARES: Of course not. You’re always welcome here, Herm. Always. (pause) So…
HERMES: (laughing) Who has something wrong now? It’s not so easy to fill the space, is it?
ARES: You’re right, it’s not. But… But I don’t feel as much need to fill the space with you around. And that’s kinda nice.
HERMES: Oh yeah?
ARES: Yeah. I could sit in silence with you and never once be bored.
HERMES: (fond teasing) My company is just that riveting, huh.
ARES: (remarkably genuine) It really is.
CALLIOPE: The silence that passes between them would once again make for bad podcasting. But know that the silence wasn’t tense or awkward, it was gentle and full of fondness.
HERMES: Can I ask you something?
ARES: Of course you can.
HERMES: What’s it like being married?
ARES: It’s not–
HERMES: I know it’s not real in the sense that you’re two people in love who made a conscious choice to be together, but I’m sure it’s still like something, you know?
ARES: It’s… It’s fine, I guess? I don’t know, it’s hard to wrap my head around it sometimes. Dite is my best friend and I love her to pieces but I always thought that if I got married it would be someone that I could just… Hold. Cuddle. Kiss. Maybe even do more than that, I don’t know, it’s always been abstract thoughts outside of the thought of holding someone I love close to me and never letting go. We’re married because we didn’t really have any other choice; we still sleep in our own rooms and don’t cuddle any more than we had during a movie night before. Nothing’s changed except our titles to each other, so I can’t really speak to what it’s like being married.
HERMES: I didn’t realize those were things you wanted. (pause) That sounds bad, hang on–
ARES: (laughing) No, no, commit to the bit. You gotta double down now.
HERMES: (laughing) I guess I didn’t expect that our big, burly god of war would be such a secret softie. Even knowing you for as long as I have, it still surprises me sometimes to hear you speak so… Honestly? And openly? About your feelings. Mortals like to portray you as this tough guy who doesn’t show emotions but you’re always so gentle and caring and I just… I don’t know. I guess I got curious about what this was all like for you. You wanted to marry Aphrodite once upon a time. Guess I just wondered if being married to her was somehow still fulfilling a fantasy.
ARES: I wanted to marry her before I knew her better. Once I did know her, I knew that our friendship would always be enough for me and that I didn’t need anything different. I love her, of course I do, and at times it skews almost romantic in my mind, but mostly she’s my best friend. Being married to her is nice because she’s my best friend, not because I’m in love with her.
HERMES: That makes sense. Thank you, Ares.
ARES: For what?
HERMES: For being honest. And for indulging my silly questions.
ARES: They’re not silly questions, Hermes. Not coming from you.
CALLIOPE: I bet you’re wondering what is happening with Aphrodite and Hephaestus right about now. And if you weren’t, my sincerest apologies but that is where the story is moving. We rejoin our dear goddesses post-forging, drinking ciders at Hephaestus’ small kitchen table.
HEPHAESTUS: So how do you feel after your first bit of metal work?
APHRODITE: Mostly I’m just surprised I didn’t set either of us on fire.
HEPHAESTUS: I wouldn’t have let that happen, you know that. I’ve got a lot of magical failsafes in place in the forge so even if you did fuck up– which you didn’t, I might add– we wouldn’t have gotten hurt. Or, well. Not seriously hurt.
APHRODITE: (laughing) It was a lot of fun, Phae. I definitely understand why you love it so much. The buzz of the electricity while welding and then the feeling of hitting the metal into a flattened shape… It was incredible. My arms are gonna be sore for days, but it was incredible.
HEPHAESTUS: You know, a good way to deal with the soreness is to do this again so you can become accustomed to the work that goes into forging…
APHRODITE: Maybe once I get the feeling back in my arms.
HEPHAESTUS: Oh come on, it can’t be that bad.
APHRODITE: Tell that to my shoulders!
HEPHAESTUS: You’re just being a baby. Here, come here.
CALLIOPE: Hephaestus stood up, pulling Aphrodite towards her and starting to knead her fingers into Aphrodite’s shoulder.
HEPHAESTUS: Your muscles are tense, this is true, but I’d put money on that coming more from you being stressed out than anything you did in the forge today.
APHRODITE: (slightly flustered) You don’t have to do this.
HEPHAESTUS: (too focused to notice what’s happening) It’ll help, Aph, I promise. Just relax a little bit for me.
APHRODITE: Fine, fine, do your worst. (pause) This was a lot of fun though. Even if I will be feeling muscles in my arms that I can’t even name for days on end. How do you do this every day?
HEPHAESTUS: Have you seen these arms? They were built for forging.
APHRODITE: Doesn’t mean it isn’t impressive.
HEPHAESTUS: There, all done. That wasn’t so hard, now, was it? And I didn’t say it wasn’t impressive. (teasing) I know my arms are my best feature.
APHRODITE: They are remarkably strong. I’m sure that’s someone’s thing.
HEPHAESTUS: (mock hurt) What, you don’t think they’re my best feature?
APHRODITE: (flat but sincere) That’s definitely your heart, Phae.
HEPHAESTUS: (flustered) What?
APHRODITE: Oh come on, don’t tell me you don’t know that. You’re a delight to be around and an incredible friend to have. Surely you know that. Please tell me you know that.
HEPHAESTUS: I, um. Thank you, Aph. I’m not used to people other than Di telling me stuff like that. And Hermes sometimes, but mostly Di. You really mean it?
APHRODITE: Of course I do. I love being your friend, it’s been the highlight of this year getting to know you better and becoming friends with you. Way better than anything else going on in my life.
HEPHAESTUS: (joking) But you got married this year.
APHRODITE: Exactly.
HEPHAESTUS: …I’m really happy to be your friend too, you know. It’s kinda funny, I didn’t really have friends outside of Di before this year but now… I never expected to have this many people I cared about. Or who cared about me.
APHRODITE: Well, you deserve to have people who care about you. And don’t you forget that.
CALLIOPE: With that, dear listeners, we shall draw our story to a close for the day. With each passing breath, something grows between our faithful duos, but what that is is too new to name for now. We will tend to what is growing here next time. Until then: thank you, as always, for listening.
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