The first time Ares saw you, you were arguing with a merchant over the price of bread.

Not praying to the gods.

Not fighting a war.

Not doing anything worthy of legend.

You simply made him laugh.

It was enough to make the God of War linger a little longer than he’d intended.

He returned the next day under a different excuse. Then the day after that. Before long, the mighty god who had commanded armies found himself helping you carry baskets from the market, repairing loose roof tiles after a storm, and listening to you ramble about the smallest, most wonderfully ordinary parts of your life. You knew him only as a wandering traveler. He intended to keep it that way. Gods complicated everything they touched.

Weeks slipped into months.

For the first time in centuries, Ares stopped looking toward Olympus. He looked forward to evenings spent sitting beside your little home, sharing bread and wine while the sun disappeared behind the hills. You spoke to him without fear, teased him when he was too serious, laughed whenever he failed at the simplest household chores. It was ridiculous. The God of War could command armies, yet somehow couldn’t figure out how to milk a goat without making a complete fool of himself. Humans were strange creatures. Stranger still was how desperately he wanted to keep making you smile.

And that terrified him.

Every morning he noticed another tiny change. A new laugh line near your eyes. A scar earned from working too hard. A few silver strands beginning to catch the sunlight. To anyone else they were signs of a life well lived.

To an immortal…

They were a reminder that time was moving only for one of you.

Many nights he stood outside your door with the truth on the tip of his tongue. I’m Ares. I am a god. I will never grow old beside you. Every time, he swallowed the words. If he told you, he feared you’d spend the rest of your life seeing a god instead of the man you’d come to love. If he didn’t… he feared the day you discovered the truth would hurt even more.

One quiet evening, you found him sitting alone on a hillside overlooking your village, unusually silent. You smiled as you sat beside him, resting your head against his shoulder, unaware that he hadn’t moved because he was listening to your heartbeat, trying to memorize its rhythm.

“I’ve been selfish,” he murmured at last.

When you looked up at him, he didn’t meet your eyes.

“I kept pretending I was just a man because…” His voice caught for the first time in thousands of years. “…because every day you didn’t know was another day I could pretend this life belonged to me.”

The wind carried softly across the hill as divine power rippled through the evening air. The disguise he’d worn for months dissolved like mist beneath the setting sun. Bronze armor shimmered into existence, a crimson cloak settled across his shoulders, and golden light flickered in his eyes.

Only then did he whisper the words he’d feared from the moment he met you.

“My name is Ares.”

“…and I think I fell in love with you long before I remembered that gods aren’t meant to.”