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Part 8 of ☀️ oKathleen's ToApril 2024 ☀️, Part 1 of ⚡ oKathleen's ToApril 2025 ⚡
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ToApril 2024, ToApril 2025
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Published:
2024-04-14
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2025-04-02
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3,887
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2/2
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73
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I loved you dangerously (more than the air that I breathe)

Summary:

Commodus had shoved Apollo’s knees down roughly and climbed into the bath to sit on his thighs, completely preventing any struggle. One of his hands pressed into his ex-lover’s windpipe while the other smothered his nose and mouth. The freezing bathwater flooded over the edges of the bath like tidal waves from his movement.

Their position was intimate; Apollo had been under him before, but not in this way, and Commodus’s icy hatred was just as tender and passionate as his burning love.

OR: Revenge is a dish best served so cold that you get hypothermia after your ex-lover tries to drown you.

Day 12 of ToApril 2024: "Revenge Served Cold" and day 3 of ToApril 2025: "Hope Breathed Alive"

Notes:

Chapter 1: you took me down, down, down, and kissed my lips with goodbye

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Apollo woke up to a pounding headache and a jet of freezing water in his face. 

His first reaction was to jerk upwards to escape the water, but there was nowhere to go. A sharp jolt of agony split his skull when his forehead bumped into something cold and metal - a faucet? 

Blinking furiously through blurry vision and wet eyelashes, he coughed out a mouthful of water and turned his head to the side to not inhale any more. The water dribbled down from his mouth but more of it kept coming, a heavy spray of water drenching his hair and face. 

He screwed his eyes shut tight against the water and tried to squirm away to pull himself up again, but quickly realised the effort was futile. 

His wrists were restrained, cuffed around the faucet above his head. The harsh metal handcuffs were scraping away his skin, worsening the angry red burns on his wrists every time he thrashed around. He desperately tried to pick with his fingernails to unlock the shackles, but they were fastened tightly, and must have been made of Celestial Bronze because it barely even made a scratch. 

The room was spinning and fuzzy around the edges, but from what he could see he was in a modern, squeaky-clean bathroom with white tile walls and a dark grey slate floor. The tub he laid in was long, deep, and oval-shaped - perfectly sized to fit one mortal Lester. It was a gleaming white bathtub, sunken into the floor on a raised platform slightly higher than the rest of the bathroom. He would admire the interior decor if he weren’t currently busy drowning. 

Apollo watched the water level rising in trepidation. He shivered when the icy bathwater finally submerged his shoulders. 

How long did it take to go into hypothermic shock, again? Was it twenty minutes, thirty minutes? 

The only issue was, he didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious in the water for before he woke up. He could already have hypothermia. 

In the haziness of his brain, it felt like all his medical knowledge was escaping him. 

"Ugh!" someone was grunting and shuffling around near him and Apollo tried to peer over but could only see a tuft of dark hair. There was a sharp grating sound like a metal chair being scraped along the floor. 

"M-Meg?" he stuttered, teeth chattering and voice trembling. 

Meg swore under her breath and Apollo would have chastised her or washed her mouth out with soap if he had the energy. 

"Yeah it’s me," she called, sounding frustrated as she tried to drag herself towards him. "I’m tied up to a freaking chair. Gah - urgh my ribs!" she gasped and paused in her struggling, letting out a quiet whimper. In the corner of his vision, he could see her chair wobbling and almost tipping forwards before it stabilised. 

"Okay, n-no rush," Apollo stammered. "I’m just having a nice bath here. Nice and r-relaxing." 

"Leo’s bleeding from his head, he's knocked out," Meg groaned through gritted teeth. "We’re only tied with rope - he could burn through it, but I can’t move my - ow, ow ! I think my ribs might be broken." 

She breathed out thinly and raggedly, staying completely still to try and ride through the pain. 

Apollo winced in sympathy; Meg had been nearly crushed by the serpent earlier and he knew how that felt. 

He tried not to think about Python crushing and suffocating him as his lungs burned from the intake of water. 

"Sorry," Meg said in a small voice, making an agonised gasping sound. "Really hurts. I can't help-" 

There was a banging noise from outside the bathroom, and the mahogany door was slammed open forcefully. 

The last Apollo saw of Meg was her wide, startled dark brown eyes before her chair was dragged back in place and she gave a frustrated growl. 

"Strike her," Commodus’s cool voice ordered, and his Germani bodyguard hurried to follow his order. 

"Don't t-touch her!" Apollo snarled, but his voice was weak and wavering, and the former emperor just laughed derisively. 

Meg let out a winded, breathless moan when she was hit in the stomach. She soon stopped struggling and went quiet. 

"I'll - kill - you," Apollo seethed. 

The water was up to his ears now and he shook his head, wet curls plastered limply to his forehead. He probably didn't make the most intimidating impression in his sopping wet, acne-ridden, sewage-stinking teenage mortal form. But Commodus still faltered when he approached the edge of the bathtub. 

"Like you did last time?" Commodus sneered, his brilliant blue eyes glinting cruelly. "Good luck with that." 

Apollo scowled darkly and twisted his whole body up to try and lunge for Commodus. But he wasn't close enough to do any damage; his legs were cuffed together too so he couldn't kick out. He tried to viciously jab upwards with his elbows and Commodus took a wary step back. Apollo was rewarded with a brief moment of satisfaction when a flash of fear passed over his ex-lover’s face.

Until the sudden movement within his restraints made his wrist jolt out of place with an echoing POP. 

"Fuck," Apollo hissed, glancing up at his right wrist and the bone jutting out at entirely the wrong angle under the skin.  

He hated that he could instantly tell what the problem was. A displaced fracture in the radius and a dislocation of the ulna at the wrist. Oh, brilliant. That information was completely useless to him when he couldn't do anything about it! 

Commodus snorted. "Oh my, how far you've fallen." 

The pain hadn't set in yet and his wrist was completely numb, and the stream of water was cascading down his face, into his mouth. So instead of swallowing it and contributing to his own slow demise by secondary drowning, Apollo spat out a mouthful of water at the false god. He let out a breathless wheeze of a laugh when Commodus glared pathetically, his beard dripping wet. 

He looked like a sopping wet puppy. 

Apollo giggled at the sight, feeling his wrist starting to throb and a stream of blood trickling down his eyebrow. Oh, he was definitely concussed. 

Then Commodus's glare quickly turned into a clenching of fists and a thinning of the lips, and a glint of pure rage in his eyes.  

Apollo had no time to hold his breath. His last thought was; at least his attention isn't on Meg or Leo-

-before his head was forcefully slammed into the cold porcelain of the bathtub. 

A cloud of dark red blood dispersed into the icy bathwater. 

Apollo gurgled in surprise, letting out a panicked breath in a stream of bubbles. He writhed and flailed around desperately to escape Commodus's hold, but his efforts only made his lungs burn for air. The water was deep enough now that his nose and mouth were completely submerged. 

The only sound he could hear from under the water was the metallic scraping of his shackles against the bath, and a muffled unintelligible shouting from Meg. 

Commodus leaned over him, tightening his hold around the former sun god's neck. He had the strength of a minor god now, so his grip was suffocating and bruising. There was a sickening, vengeful smile contorting his beautiful face. 

Apollo couldn't believe that he used to love that smile, that he used to kiss that face. That it might be the last face he would ever see. 

How utterly ironic. 

Apollo spluttered and choked, trying his best not to inhale any water, trying to remind himself to hold his breath - even while every instinct screamed at him to BREATHE. 

The rushing water from the silver faucet above had been turned up, splashing Commodus in the process, though it didn’t distract him from his mission. 

The water level was rising quickly, covering Apollo’s whole body, leaving him shivering and shaking. He pulled on the handcuffs weakly and jerked his whole body up in a futile last-ditch effort to do something but it twisted the bone in his wrist again and he let out a muffled moan. 

Commodus had a vengeful, determined glint in his eyes. His image through the water was rippling, getting more and more blurry - until all Apollo could see was a reflection of himself, the reflection of a murderer two thousand years ago, shoving his lover’s head underwater, tears streaming down his face as he apologised and used his godly strength to drown him - was this really what he looked like-?

Apollo’s weak human lungs were burning - and his instinct to breathe overrode all logic, because he opened his mouth in a desperate gasp for air. He gagged at the coppery taste of blood in the water, and all he achieved was a non-stop cycle of a coughing and retching fit. He inhaled desperately, choked on the water, gasped for more air, choked upon inhaling more water and blood- 

His head felt heavy, it was pounding and splitting open and his eyes were bulging out and his hands were turning blue- 

Commodus had shoved Apollo’s knees down roughly and climbed into the bath to sit on his thighs, completely preventing any struggle. One of his hands pressed into his ex-lover’s windpipe while the other smothered his nose and mouth. The freezing bathwater flooded over the edges of the bath like tidal waves from his movement. 

Their position was intimate; Apollo had been under him before, but not in this way, and Commodus’s icy hatred was just as tender and passionate as his burning love. 

You blessed me, Commodus was mouthing, you blessed me - or maybe he was screaming it but Apollo couldn’t hear him over the high-pitched ringing and the rushing of water in his ears. 

The lack of circulation was making him lightheaded. His vision was nothing more than a dizzy haze, clouded by bitter tears and blood. He couldn’t tell when he had started crying; his tears blended into the water, leaving a salty taste on his tongue. 

His eyelids fluttered weakly as Commodus pushed him impossibly harder into the porcelain, and the thump of his head against the bath was muffled through the water. His head was cracking open and his eyes were rolling up and Commodus’s weight was suffocating him; but despite everything, the fingers on his neck were soft and caressing as they squeezed the life out of him-

Commodus leaned down, his deep blue eyes as merciless as an ocean, sweeping him away into its tide- 

- and kissed him, tenderly, hungrily and desperately almost as if he was the one suffocating. 

The kiss lingered on Apollo's lips, leaving him breathless, stealing all the air from his lungs more than drowning ever could. And he would have squirmed away, but the worst thing was he didn't want to.

He needed more.

So he kissed back. 

And maybe their love had always been doomed to drown him in the end-

Everything went still for a moment as the weight on him was removed. 

Apollo stared blankly up at the bathroom ceiling with glazed-over eyes, letting out his last breathless wheeze. His chest felt tight, like Commodus had never separated from him and would always be a part of him, always constricting his breathing. His head was light from the lack of oxygen, his mind felt detached from his body and he was sinking, down, down, down into the depths-

Someone was yelling, their voice high-pitched and frantic, blending into a buzzing noise in the background. Their hands cradled him under his neck and Apollo would have flinched away but all his limbs were numb and he had no energy left to move. The water was starting to bubble and steam around the person’s hands, and with the last of his waning strength he leaned towards the heat like a moth drawn to a flame. 

The surface of the water rippled as he was forcefully dragged up around his middle. Waves of cold water cascaded over the edges of the bathtub, flooding the bathroom. Someone turned the tap off and pulled the plug, and the water started to drain and swirl in a whirlpool, but not fast enough because he was still submersed and the bath was deep and overflowing- 

Apollo's body hung limply from the bronze shackles, and he was nothing more than deadweight, unable to do anything to make it easier for his rescuer, but he couldn't bring himself to care. 

The whole world was peaceful and silent while the ghost of Commodus's touch lingered on his neck; the ghost of his sweet kiss on his lips. 

It wouldn't be so bad to die, right here, right now, would it? 

Notes:

Hi FireAlder2005 this is dedicated to you, I have now joined you in the Copollo brainrot! Pls help they are consuming me :)

day 12 [2,115 words] - five of the most used words were: water, Apollo, Commodus, eyes, bath

Chapter 2: there's only one place this could lead (you are fire, I'm gasoline)

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Apollo awoke laying on his side, blinking away the blackness from his vision.

His body lurched forward on instinct as he expelled the contents of his stomach onto the grey bathroom tiles. Someone had put a fluffy white towel under his head, which was starting to become stained with flecks of blood and vomit.

“Okay,” Leo was murmuring while patting his back, “You’re okay man, just spit it all out, that’s it...” 

“Oh my gods,” Meg was sobbing loudly, with her trembling hand resting in his soaked curls. “You stopped breathing and - and your face was all blue, I was so scared, oh my gods-” 

“Yeah, that was, uh,” Leo swallowed, looking shaken up. “Never do that again, okay?”

Apollo tried to let out an exhausted moan, but his airway must have been damaged from the asphyxiation because it came out as nothing more than a strained gasp. He heaved again, stomach convulsing and clenching painfully as he threw up a thin spray of water and blood. Meg stroked his hair in comfort and held onto his less injured hand. 

Liquid bronze was dripping down from the bath faucets to his wrists, leaving scorched red skin where the handcuffs had been. He supposed if he wasn’t so numb right now, he would be more worried about the burns.

Apollo could feel the heat around his ankles as Leo started to carefully melt the metal. The warmth of the son of Hephaestus’s fire started to thaw his bones out. 

“Hhhhh - mmgh,” Apollo groaned and blinked up at Meg, trying to focus all his energy on bringing in air. “Meg – what happen-” 

There was a dribble of spit coming from the corner of his mouth, and Meg took the unused corner of the towel to wipe it from his cheek.   

“You were just having a nice little relaxing bath, you’re okay,” she promised, her shoulders shaking with the force of her quiet sobs. “It's okay, we got you.” 

“Oh, yeah, nice and relaxing,” Leo agreed, scooping up liquid bronze with his bare hands to try and avoid burning Apollo’s skin further. His tone was light as if he wanted to seem unfazed and calm in front of Meg. “Would’ve been more fun with a rubber ducky, though.”

Apollo groaned in return, coughing up some phlegm.

Meg was shivering even more than him. She smelled like dead rats and her hair was still a little damp from their earlier trip in the sewers. Her eyes were red and teary and her face was still twisted into a grimace from her cracked or broken ribs. Apollo didn't think it was good news that she was shivering way more than him.

It was bad to be hypothermic and stop shivering, right? 

Meg gently squeezed his uninjured hand and then put two fingers on his wrist, checking for a pulse. “His pulse is still weak,” she told Leo, her eyebrows furrowed in worry. 

Apollo’s blood pounded in his ears. He could feel the syncopated rhythm of his irregular heartbeat, from the pure shock and stress of his near-death experience. He couldn't control his breathing; he was still panting and taking in panicked breaths, unable to calm it down and even it out. The more he tried to focus on just breathing, the harder it got. 

“‘M fine,” Apollo slurred, leaning into Meg's comforting touch. “Not cold anymore…”

Leo suddenly sat up from where he had been toasting Apollo's ankles. The metal ankle cuffs unlocked and fell to the bathroom floor with a clink . “That's… not a good sign, right?” he asked, his brown eyes wide in alarm. 

“Mmh… don't feel anything,” Apollo murmured, feeling sleepy. “’S’alright,” he insisted. But the nausea rose in his throat again and he gagged, his whole body shuddering as he tried to vomit again. He spat out more bile and blood onto the towel. 

Meg winced in sympathy. 

“Uh, I’m pretty sure it's not good if the shivering stops,” Leo said firmly. “I did freaking CPR on you, I was singing Stayin’ Alive and everything. You should probably trust everything I say from now on, you know, ‘cause I did save your life.”

Apollo pulled away from Meg’s touch. Her hand checking his forehead temperature suddenly felt freezing cold, and Leo’s words were loud, piercing his ears.

“Guhhh,” Apollo choked out.

“You’re very welcome,” Leo replied, a slight tremble to his voice.

His head pounded painfully.

Leo had saved him – Apollo had died.

It was just starting to register in his brain.

It came back to him in flashes. The freezing cold water in the back of his throat – the burning in his lungs – the look of pure devotion in Commodus’ eyes – the warmth of his embrace – the gentle touch of his lips. The peace that came with unconsciousness. He had stopped struggling – he had given in.

Apollo’s body still yearned for Commodus’ touch – he wanted to relive and linger in that moment forever, drowning in his lover, suffocated, heart and soul belonging to him in his final moments.

“We should get your shirt off. The wet clothes will just make it worse.” Leo’s lips were thinned into a grim frown to form the most serious look he'd probably ever worn. 

Something about removing wet clothes sounded right, but his brain felt just as frozen as his body. What else were you meant to do when someone had hypothermia? He couldn't remember. 

No, no he couldn’t possibly have hypothermia – he felt fine.

“Can… sleep? Tired,” Apollo mumbled in confusion when Leo's heated, warm hands started to lift his shirt up, careful to avoid touching his injured wrist. He flinched when the wet fabric was pulled over the back of his head and it came away smeared in blood. 

Apollo wanted to drift away into the darkness again. He wanted to feel Commodus’ hands constricting his throat, he wanted – he wanted to feel something.

“No!” Meg insisted loudly, poking his side to keep him awake. “No sleeping! Idiot!”

“Ohh, fine,” he muttered, dazed, eyelashes fluttering in exhaustion. 

Leo carefully lifted some brown curls at the back of Apollo’s head and then pressed the wet shirt to the wound to put pressure on it. 

“Ow,” Apollo winced at the prodding fingers. 

“Sorry,” Leo said apologetically. “It doesn’t look too bad. It’s just bleeding a lot ‘cause head wounds do that.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Meg asked, wiggling and waving her hands right in front of his face. It didn’t help that she was moving them around so much. She was definitely doing it on purpose to annoy him.

Apollo tried to follow them but his vision was blurred and everything was doubled. “Um - eleven?” he asked hesitantly. 

“Close enough,” Meg shrugged, but her dark eyes were filled with worry. 

Apollo blinked furiously and his gaze settled and focused on the still body of Commodus lying on the floor next to the bath. He too was completely soaked, hair plastered to his forehead and clothes sticking to his body. His beautiful face was scorched an angry red with the skin peeling, giving off a nauseating smell of burnt flesh that permeated the room. 

The guilt swirled in his stomach. He couldn’t help but think… it was all his fault wasn’t it? He had made Commodus into this. He had betrayed him first. 

Apollo didn’t want to see if his ex-lover's chest was moving up and down – he didn’t want to know if Commodus was breathing or not. Either way, it would hurt. Perhaps he could try and fool himself into believing he didn’t care.

His heart twinged painfully.

How Apollo wished he could silence his human heart; stop it from beating. It had betrayed him.

Leo’s expression darkened when he noticed Apollo’s lingering gaze. “Here,” he said, holding out a fresh fluffy white towel from the bathroom cupboard – the largest one he could find. Apollo really hoped they were in Commodus’ personal bathroom, ruining his best towels. It was just the kind of petty revenge they needed right now. 

Meg took the towel and started to wrap Apollo up in a bundle like a burrito. She carefully patted his hair dry with it, avoiding the back of his head where the injury was. And then she rested her head on his shoulder and cuddled up next to him, ignoring the puddle she was sitting in on the flooded bathroom floor. 

Apollo watched with detached fascination as his limbs started to quake with tremors again. 

Leo slumped down on his other side, letting out an exhausted sigh. He leaned into them, warming his body up like he was their own personal heater.

They stayed in that position for a prolonged moment, frozen like time had paused, trying to process exactly what had just happened.

Meg had stopped shivering.

Apollo blinked the dizziness away from his vision and tried to remember how to breathe.

“’S all my f-fault,” he whispered in horror, hands shaking where they were bundled up in the towel. His wrist twinged painfully.

“We should get out of here,” Meg said softly, exchanging a concerned glance with Leo. “We shouldn’t linger. We need to find Mnemosyne’s Throne.”

“I’m a murderer,” Apollo was repeating under his breath, in shock. “I murdered him, I-” and he wasn’t referring to the maybe-dead-or-not body beside them.

His mind was stuck two thousand years ago.

He could feel his own immortal hands, pushing his lover under, suffocating him so easily and thoughtlessly. He could see the face of a ruthless, merciless god, emotionless and colder than the freezing water itself.

He was no different than Commodus. No less cruel, no less heartless. What right did he have to punish Commodus for crimes he had not yet committed? What right did he have to take his life?

How ironic that it was Apollo himself who had pushed his lover towards hatred and betrayal. 

Apollo's love corrupted; that was it, there was nothing more to it. Apollo's love was a curse.

“Come on,” Leo urged him, putting an arm around Apollo’s waist and supporting his weight to try and get him up slowly, on trembling legs. “Let’s keep moving.”

Meg adjusted the towel around his shoulders, her warm hand clutching tightly to his.

Apollo couldn’t drag his eyes away from the sight of the body; his biggest regret, his most monumental fuck-up, his sweetest memory; until they shut the door, leaving a stunned silence in the corridor of the sewer palace. 

Commodus’ hateful love was a poison of his own creation, and Apollo drank it willingly, eagerly, yet still, he wanted more of it.

He wanted more of it.

Notes:

Apollo *concussed*: so... when is he going to choke me to death again, pls? 😳

yes you really are seeing this, it’s a second chapter a year later. happy ToApril again!
chapter 1 was written for day 12 of ToApril 2024 "Revenge Served Cold" and chapter 2 was written for day 3 of ToApril 2025 "Hope Breathed Alive" :)

day 3 [1,788 words] – five of the most used words were: Apollo, Commodus, body, wanted, more.