Archive of Our Own ^beta

The second or third time they slept together, Samothes lay in bed with Samot’s soft, lithe body stretched out against his own, breathing slow and heavy in the aftermath of lust.

“How does it feel when I come inside you?” he asked.

“Hm?”

“You… seem to enjoy it a lot.”

“Mm, I do,” Samot mumbled, sounding half-asleep already. “Feels nice.”

Samothes supposed he ought to stop talking and let Samot rest. With the hunger of the freshly infatuated, they had made love all afternoon, and the air of his windowless chambers was thick with the taste of it. Still, his curiosity grew by leaps and bounds every time he watched Samot’s face while the young god found pleasure under him… which was how it went, because it was easy, because Samothes was a king whose pride required he be in control and Samot was hungry for whatever he was given. But it was that very eagerness that made Samothes wonder.

“I’ve been with other men before,” he admitted, massaging small circles into the skin above Samot’s bony hip and enjoying the flutter of a pulse he could feel there. “Mortals. Fewer than you’d think, maybe. But I’ve never…”

“Been fucked?” The profanity fell feather-light and lyrical from Samot’s lips. “We’ll change that.”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Samothes whispered. But Samot was already asleep—or at least pretending to be, with a curious little smile on his pretty face.

***

There came days after that when Samot penetrated him with fingers and tongue, which Samothes found he liked. There also came days, unpredictable in their pattern and seemingly unrelated to Samot’s mood, when he deigned to have a cock of similar shape to Samothes’ own.

There were things Samothes learned with him like this that he couldn’t have otherwise. How to take the head of Samot’s cock to the back of the throat without difficulty, how to ease the loose skin of his scrotum up into the softness of his body and create more channels for his pleasure. But in the end Samothes was struck more by what did not change upon transformation: the taste of Samot, the shape of his cock half-sheathed in its hood, whether provocation brought it to a hand’s length or a fingertip’s. Indeed it was not this shape, nor exactly the configurations of pleasure it permitted, that Samothes had meant to say was new to him.

One such night on the Plains of Celebration, when the admirers that were always buzzing around Samot in that place had retired and the two gods lay alone in a bed meant to hold ten or twenty, Samothes felt his curiosity reach that peak it had been building to; the point where it had been tuned over enough times in his mind for wondering to become asking.

He had spent the sultry, dark winter’s evening systematically taking Samot apart, then cleaned away their combined come from Samot’s body with a warm cloth, and now his lover lay curled into him very much like the wolfdog whose mannerisms he kept even in human shape. Consumed with fondness, Samothes reached down and tucked sweat-damp hair back from Samot’s temple.

“My love,” he said. “When we’ve had a rest, would you… have me, for a bit?”

“Have you?” Samot’s mouth twitched up in one corner. “In what sense?”

“Any,” Samothes said, feeling his face grow hot. “I mean, any you like.”

Samot rolled over to consider him like a prince holding court from his throne of cushions. “It’s very sweet how coy you act about this. You’re not weaker for wanting me inside you.”

“No, but I want...”

“Want what?”

“To feel weak,” Samothes confessed, his throat dry. “To feel like this body has things in it I can’t control, hidden mechanisms beholden to my lover. I’ve never felt that with anyone but you.”

Samot sat up a little on his hands. His hair was mussed from the night’s activity so that its backlit golden strands framed his shoulders, tumbling down around the small well-shaped breasts which he did not always have, but had today. That Samothes’ words had piqued his interest was as apparent in his nascent smile as it was in the shape of his cock where it lay half-hardening against the paler skin of one thigh, just visible through the diaphanous silk that he wore for its scant warmth in this season. There were red welts and bruises underneath the fabric too. Samothes could still feel a stinging on his left cheekbone where Samot had struck him across the face while riding him earlier; Samot had ‘forgotten’ that he was wearing a jewelled ring, and Samothes had been happy to devise a suitable punishment for drawing a living god’s blood… every time they lay together their theatrics grew more elaborate. They were both in a gentler mood now.

“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say so,” Samot murmured, placing one hand in the centre of Samothes’ chest, and Samothes let himself be pushed down to lie among cushions already warm and flattened into his shape. The tent smelt of lanolin and lamp oil underneath the light musk of wine and Samot’s perfume. “But King-God, is it wise to ask such things of a creature like me?”

Samothes opened his mouth to protest—that he trusted the man he took as his lover, that Samot was a shard of Nothing no longer, that he knew what he was asking and would not stand for condescension—but Samot leaned down and kissed the words away. He reached down to cup Samothes, the many-times-spent softness of him, in one hand, and with a low groan Samothes curled his hands into the cushions on either side. What happened to taking a rest first? he wanted to ask, but could not speak. It felt almost like Samot had bitten off his tongue, except that he could still feel the weight of it in his mouth and he could taste no blood.

The oil Samot had used to prepare himself for Samothes earlier in the evening was still lying somewhere to the side, and Samot grasped it now, uncapping the vial and letting a copious amount run over his fingers before he brought them to the apex of Samothes’ thighs to circle, cool and light and teasing against his skin, to press inward—

Samothes made a sound like protest in the back of his throat.

“You want to speak?” Samot asked. Samothes shook his head, turning his face into cushions already hot and damp with his breath—the pressure soothed the heavy numbness of his hurt cheek—and Samot shuddered out a laugh as he lowered himself between Samothes’ spread thighs.

“Look at you.” His hands on Samothes’ hips were icy, his voice dripping with urgent desire. “Asking me to make you submit, but not even putting up a fight. I was going to make you beg, but you're being so good it would feel cruel...”

That, Samothes thought, was not entirely fair. Samot had done something to him with that kiss, with every appreciative knead of Samothes’ chest or his belly or the flesh around his hips, with the way his lips brushed lovingly, light as petals, against Samothes’ inner thigh. When his tongue came to lap warm and wet at Samothes’ entrance, his hand on Samothes’ stiffening cock became a torture only heightened when he dropped it to cup Samothes’ balls, massaging them gently in his palm.

Eventually Samothes’ movements under that doting touch were such that Samot had to stop his tongue and hands’ work to slip his silk robe from his shoulders and bind Samothes’ wrists firmly to the bedpost with it. Samothes felt that he should know the name of the knot Samot used and how to loosen it, felt the knowledge right at the tip of his tongue… but that name eluded him in a way he was not at all used to. How could he, Ingenuity Alive, not know? How could he—ah.

This was how it felt to lose himself to someone. Samot’s nails were often sharp and clawlike, but Samothes could feel nothing of them now as Samot fucked him open, only a blunt intrusion that made him adjust, soften and yield. When those fingers were removed he felt oddly empty.

A mercy that Samot did not tease, but slid against him as easily as breathing, folding Samothes’ larger frame near in half beneath him and pressing down into him, completing him.

He did not ask gloating questions about whether he was the first to have Samothes like this—did not speak at all, in fact, but set a pace that would have been punishing if Samothes were not so utterly, shamelessly hungry for it. He had never felt at once so hollow and so full, as though Samot had eaten something out of the core of him and was now pouring it back in, not quite knowing how to make it fit, with every slap of himself against the backs of Samothes’ thighs. Samothes still could not form words, but inarticulate noises slipped past his dry tongue and he arched and strained at the bonds around his wrists, not really wanting to break them, unspeakably grateful for their strength.

“Look at me.” Samot gripped Samothes’ chin with one hand, his voice rough and soft and torn—perhaps this was why he had been silent, because words would reveal the extent of his discomposure. “Lord… you’re beautiful. Look at me.”

Samothes opened his eyes. Above him, Samot’s face was luminous with want, his eyes dilated to black pits inside a slender ring of violet. He recognised that luminosity as more than just elation or pleasure but as his own light, taken from him to wreath Samot’s form. Samot was wearing him like a cloak. It should have been frightening, but in the divine mirror of Samot’s face Samothes was too distracted watching himself, the vision imposed on him by Samot one of a mere man, sweat shining at the hollow of his throat, hair plastered to his temples and muscles straining fruitlessly under Samot’s inhuman force. He looked ensorcelled, wrecked, almost mortal… but his body had not, as the sheer newness of the sensations had made him fear, been reshaped under Samot’s touch.

Samot redoubled his grip on Samothes’ thigh, his waist, his nails digging into Samothes’ flesh until he broke skin, but Samothes could hardly register it as pain; it only sharpened the sensation of Samot driving against that part of him that seemed so perfectly engineered to receive such pleasure, sending waves of heat to break against the furnace that was his core. Samothes could have sobbed with relief as Samot quickened yet again, working and working his prostate to shove him over the shaking precipice of what he recognised as orgasm, if a kind slightly foreign to him.

He cried out as he came: his lover’s name, whatever geas Samot had put on him finally broken.

Samot did not try to replace it, did not slow, fucking him through it into overstimulation until Samothes felt Samot stutter against him, breathing fast and soft as he spent himself, warm inside Samothes and warm in the weight of his body... Samot had been right, it did feel nice.

Samot slipped out of him sooner than Samothes wanted him to, and let Samothes' legs down slowly, settling braced over him as he recovered his breath. Samothes tried to focus on the rhythm of his own breathing, on the distant sough of night wind and wingbeats through the pines, but as his vision resolved enough for him to register Samot’s fucked-out, slightly amused expression, he also grew aware of a certain persisting need in himself. Through all this, Samot had not touched him where he was ordinarily most sensitive, and somehow… somehow Samothes' cock lay yet full and wanting against his belly, a trail of translucent precome smeared among the hair there.

He was sure he had come already—how was it that he was still hard? 

Samot did not seem surprised to see it. He lowered his lips to Samothes’ cock, licking once or twice at the head before sinking down and enveloping him. Samothes made a strangled sound, the most he was capable of. He couldn’t see Samot’s face anymore through the multilayered veils of Samot’s hair and his own watering eyes, but Samot’s utter self-satisfaction was palpable. It did not take much—perhaps these were aftershocks, or perhaps Samothes’ entire body was drawn too tight along a single thread of pleasure. He felt himself lifted again to that precipice, and before he could really gather the will to restrain it he was coming in slow pulses down Samot’s warm throat.

He knew from experience that Samot was more than capable of taking it all, but he released Samothes’ cock from his mouth a little early with a soft wet pop, letting a final trail of cum spurt across his lips just so that he could lick it away and swallow it down with a visible movement of his throat. Samothes was too far gone to process how arousing that should have been. 

He lay there for a minute like a man drained of his soul. Then, feeling compelled to prove that Samot had not stolen all his vigour, he threw an arm over Samot and pulled him down to rest among the cushions.

“You’re a miracle.” he said, and kissed the cold tip of Samot’s nose since it was the part most immediately presented to him. “I hope you haven't shown these tricks of yours to any mortals. You'll lure them into looking for pleasure in dangerous places.”

“My dear.” Samot caught his face in both hands, laughing. “Stay another week in my domain and you’ll find a thousand men quite capable of feeling what you just felt, at your hands or mine or each other’s.” He kissed Samothes full on the lips, with such passion and delight that Samothes couldn’t find it in himself to feel belittled. “We invented many, many things. But not that.”

A wilful misunderstanding of exactly what Samothes had meant. Samothes knew, because over the next hour or so as they held each other, the words Samot had taken from him returned, one by one, to his tongue.

King was among them.

So too was Ingenuity.

Inhibition.

Duty.

More.

It was strange how little he had missed them until they were restored. If Samot had taken something equally fundamental that he had not given back, how could Samothes know? He would not have the words to name what was gone… instead of fear, the thought sent an unadulterated thrill down his spine.

Foolishly or not, he trusted that Samot had not taken advantage of him so. The Boy-King was cunning, but not duplicitous—as much as he desired Samothes and hungered for his approval, he was perfectly willing to move against him openly, and seemed not at all cowed by the possibility of Samothes' censure. Why would he resort to the methods of the word-eaters he so abhorred when he could get anything he wanted from Samothes by far more straightforward means? Samothes thought of the school he was going to build for the boy now asleep on his chest—no question of it, whether in ten or ten hundred years, he was going to—and rubbed ruefully at his tired eyes.

One gift at a time. When he made his return to the city two weeks later, the King-God swept down to his forge without delay and hammered furiously away into the night on a new project.

***

He presented it to Samot in a open-air room atop the mountain, one of many set half into the roof of the subterranean palace. These places were meant for hosting, and so were always slightly neglected in a way that enhanced their charm, a sun-baked labyrinth full of ornate benches and falling veils of wisteria that played host only to songbirds and insects for most of the year. When he unwrapped the thing from its cloth, Samot’s first response to it was to laugh, bright and clear as the song of the linnet.

“Is this your way of saying you wish I had a cock more often?”

For the object in its cloth wrap was a cock: Samot’s cock, to be precise, sculpted from memory into silver metal with a flared base so that it could be strapped into a custom-made harness if desired. Samothes had felt oddly bashful about presenting it, but Samot’s good humour eased him into answering with confidence.

“The opposite. A way of ensuring you can have one as infrequently as you like.” His eyes wandered down the leg Samot had thrown easily aside on the bench: which was exactly where Samot wanted his attention, probably, approaching the edge of his robe where it crossed at the apex of his thigh. “But I’ll admit I’ve often wondered why you keep your body the way it is.”

“And you’ve never thought to ask?”

“No… because I’m not yet certain you do keep it that way. I’ve seen you be a wolf, and a winter’s wind… something new every season, or so it seems.” Samothes grinned to soften his words. “I don’t mind. To avoid any doubt, I like you in every shape. But forgive me a craftsman’s curiosity.”

Samot returned his smile, fondness mingling with something less readable in the expression. “I’ve told you how I came to be. Some things I took from Severea, her shrewdness and her grace. Other things… I took them from mortals, more faces than I could name. If you see me change, that’s no betrayal of my essence—for I have none, except the flesh Samol gave me. But I do have favourites. Things I’m fond of, and things I return to.” He trailed his fingertips along the metal of Samothes’ creation with something like reverence. “This is lovely. It could be a part of me too, for as long as we like.”

“I see,” said Samothes, though he was only half sure he did. Even now, he found it hard at times to understand why the being who once trapped and slew Severea—even contrite as Samot still was—would allow himself to be tamed and taken, would assume a shape that fit so comfortably in Samothes’ arms.

Then again, was it really a mystery? Samot seemed to like the way he was, the way it allowed him to move among gods and mortals, inciting respect and desire. Samothes found himself watching the muscle of his own chest through swaying fabric as they exited the palace; considering the body he had shaped from iron so long ago, the purposes it served. The solace he still took in its constancy.

“Let me admit something,” Samot said when they stopped partway down the mountain, above a ravine where water blue as cobalt threw itself into a hollow of white between two olive trees before surging on. “In the closest thing I had to an infancy, when I travelled among mortals and lived at their pace… I knew of you. At times I respected you—the image of you, the godhead, and at other times I thought you were a tyrant.” He paused. “Don’t take offence.”

Samothes shook his head. “Go on.”

“I knew mortals—I still know them, far better than you do. I saw them build houses and plant gardens, learned from them to write and paint and sing. I saw their ingenuity, saw it attributed to you, and I thought surely, even Samol embellishes the myth. No one light could have sparked all this.” Samot lowered his head as though embarrassed—a rare look for him, and when he lifted it again his eyes were shining. “That changed when I met you. I saw in you a light like no other. I see in you the best of Hieron’s people reflected, and I see your light reflected in them. And in the space between mirrors, I catch glimpses: I see what you and they could someday be, if you were to take a few lessons from each other.” A gentle sigh. “But that’s not what I mean to say. Every day I’m with you I grow more certain I took much of what I am, directly or otherwise, from you.”

“Maybe.” Samothes ran his thumb over the back of Samot’s hand. He didn’t really care to theorise about the ways gods were made. The one thing that could be said for such abstractions was that they let him match wits with Samot; let him see the look on his lover’s face when he was challenged.

“And now you’ve come to take the rest of me?” he asked.

“I’m glad we have an understanding.” Samot grinned, wide and wolfish, and Samothes pulled him closer with barely-leashed affection. He felt he should return Samot’s candour, but he was not a storyteller like Samot or Samol, who of course told it best… how he had seen the people of Hieron dumb and unable to care for themselves, and so from his divine impulse had sprung into being his first son Samothes.

No mention, because indeed it was extraneous to history, of the long night before time began when Samothes had trudged formlessly across the land he was to protect, grasping in the dark until he had found his volcano, his forge, found the tools to shape the man who would bear that name. The only evidence of that labour was in his very being, the physicality of his body as he wore it now. Perhaps that was why he was so reluctant to change as Samot did… or perhaps that was an excuse, and Samot would bring him around on this too. From their vantage on top of the hill, the future seemed obscure and endless, nigh-ripe with potentiality as a vineyard in spring.

“This land was very different when I came into flesh,” he said in the end. “Crueller, full of shadows—with nothing to keep them at bay. I’ll tell you the whole story some night if you’ll remind me, but to put it briefly, I didn’t see much in it worth imitating. Not as you do.”

Samot’s laughter rang out across the mountainside. “How very like you. What did you do?”

“Well, I made the sun.” Samothes said. “The songs call it my first and most holy creation, and neglect to mention that before I made anything else I had to... forge myself, as you see me.”

“Then the songs make an unforgivable oversight,” said Samot solemnly, and planted a kiss on Samothes’ hand as he held it. “That is the most sacred work of all.”