He smiled when she identified his source so readily. Not that Hera had ever had much difficulty seeing through his wordplay, and that had hardly been one of his finer moments. "It was most likely before, unless you went directly north after you left Olympus. Loki knows a thing or two about... problematic children. Yggdrasil, Sleipnir, Fafnir--after a point he decided that enough was enough and devised that spell to counteract any possible offspring from quickening in the womb. You can imagine how foolish I felt for not thinking of such a thing myself."<br/><br/>Zeus watched as she guided his hand, his touch gentle when it had to be, rougher when he felt it was appropriate. He felt his desire building all over again, a charge just under his skin, like a storm front within his body. It felt good to feel desire without shame again. To lust without guilt--he wondered how he had ever managed it before. Had he? Why had he fought her every time, if not for knowing he should feel awful for what he had done? A thought worth examining, but one he had examined well enough already. He pushed it down and away, focusing instead on her, on the softness of her, on the feel of her naked skin beneath his fingers.<br/><br/>"You answer your own question," he murmured. She hadn't been angry learning of his failures in their time apart, so he decided not to disseminate. "The Greeks knew much of love. The Romans even moreso... but never has the information been so widespread and accessible. This era's humans, when they aren't chafing beneath the yoke of some new god, they... ha. 'Explore.'" He lowered his lips to her ear and nuzzled. "Let me show you what new ground they have broken, my wife."<br/><br/>And for the next few hours he began to do exactly that. He had only been with two women, yes, but his curiosity toward the sexual had never been readily sated. He had studied different techniques, different styles, biology. He knew all sorts of different erogenous zones, positions, means of pleasure that he had never imagined even attempting before. Their sex life had never been lacking before, passion making up for whatever lapse in creativity there may have been, but now he hoped he could at least somewhat surprise her. By the time they slept it was an exhausted, almost immediate thing, Zeus stretched out next to his wife with his arms wrapped tight around her. He was still half convinced that this had all been some kind of dream.<br/><br/>Morning, however, proved otherwise. He awoke before her and spent a while simply watching her sleep in his embrace, the movement of her lips as she breathed, the rise and fall of her chest, the warmth of her. Slowly, very slowly and very carefully, he extracted himself and stood, turning once more to her window. Rain continued to trickle down from the clouds above, and he opened the latch so he could reach out and touch the drops for himself. It was small, but it felt good to have some connection to his power again. His control over the weather had been involuntary for decades, now, but as he looked skyward and focused the rain stopped and the clouds began to disperse, scattering until only blue skies remained.<br/><br/>He glanced again at Hera before he turned to her closet, liberating a sheet she had stored and wrapping it snugly around his body. For all her certainty that they wouldn't be disturbed, the last thing he wanted to do was encounter one of their children while in the nude. There was no shame in it, but a certain vulnerability just came with nudity, a vulnerability he didn't want to let someone like Eris or Ares have access to. Once he had secured the sheet around himself, toga-style, he began to wander her home, walking on silent feet through the rooms and hallways she had settled her life within. He paused at the photos; the day before he had been too emotional to look at more than one, but now he felt more balanced.<br/><br/>It didn't make it any easier, though. Hebe and Eileithyia had been grown when they left the Mount, but Eris had been little more than a child. She hadn't grown much, but it was still shocking to see her as an adult... an adult with pink hair here, then blue, then green. Discord, indeed. He found himself smiling as he walked down the hall, peering at frame after frame. There was Ares, with his dark hair and burning eyes, grinning as he held a dog half his size in his thick arms. Here was Hephaestus, scowling down at a piece of some kind of meat that had clearly offended him. Now Heracles sleeping on the couch with Hebe leaning against his side. His family. His mistakes.<br/><br/>Hera would find him in the kitchen, glowering at the coffee pot. His eyes were a bit red, but he had at least cleaned himself up before he let anyone else see him. He had the pot carefully taken apart, the filter and jug and every other removeable piece laid out on the counter in front of him as he desperately tried to assess how to get a drink out of the device. "Beyond obtuse," he kept muttering to himself between small sniffles.