Erotic short. A mercenary and a messenger travel together to an isolated mountain shrine.
9k, rated E, cis M/M. Euclides, a mercenary, accompanies the haughty messenger Iridoros to an isolated shrine on the top of a mountain. Euclides knows their destination well in advance — Iridoros knows flirtation and sex, and tries to ply or be plied with one or the other.
Some sexy non-bloody sacrifice, anal, teasing, back-and-forth, rough sex, some electricity play. Mostly a lot of Ancient Greek banter.
“Thank you, darling,” said the messenger, and Euclides leaned back against the corner of the chaise he was sitting on, getting a better look at the stranger as he sipped at his wine. “Aren’t you a beautiful young man? Are you a warrior?”
Galenakis laughed, charmed and flustered by the messenger’s easy flirtation — as Galenakis leaned over the table to set down each of the plates before him, the messenger reached out and brushed the backs of his knuckles against Galenakis’ upper arm.
Galenakis was indeed a strong and handsome young man — he had won the cliff dives last year some two bodies ahead of the competitor before him, climbing with the speed and grace and ease of a lizard up the cliffside, before he’d flown like an arrow down into the water below — but his modest musculature was nothing compared to that the stranger bore.
The messenger rippled with in the way that a hare might — he was squarely built but bottom heavy, his large, generous backside making the folds of his leather skirt rest on his cheeks when standing rather than hanging down as they ought at the back, and his thighs and calves both were so thick with corded muscle he resembled a marble or bronzed statue more than a living man. His hair, which Euclides guessed was very long when loosed, was finely braided at the sides, and these braids were decoratively coiled around the sides of his head before pinned and clipped to the rounded bun of the bulk of his hair at the back of his head.
It was quite the ornate style, and despite himself being rather pale and light-haired and freckled — he was originally from farther north, Euclides took it, and judging by the colour of his eyebrows, a somewhat darker shade than the corded hair on the top of his head, it wasn’t just the galaxy of freckles connecting on his face and shoulders that had been bolstered by the sun’s rays — as a young man, Euclides wouldn’t wager, his hair had been darker, until the sun had bleached it gold.
He had travelled far and wide in his duties, and it wasn’t just the complex styling of his hair that Euclides supposed he had picked up in Egypt or Cyrene — he lined his eyes with kohl to protect them from the sun as he ran, and apart from lining his own naturally thin lashes, he also wore more shadow around his eyes, which made the pale green colour of them stand out all the more.
Galenakis was not as used to handsome foreigners as one might expect, serving in a portside tavern — he was laughing again, his cheeks darkening with a blush, as the messenger rested his hand on his hip.
“Look how narrow you are about the waist,” the messenger was saying in warm, salacious tones. “Why, young man, I might carry you with one hand as easily as I might a scytale. Would you like that, were I to run with you in one hand and travel far abroad with you, deliver you as a message?”
“Who would you deliver me to?” asked Galenakis breathlessly, and the messenger’s laugh was low and rich — Euclides watched the flutter of Galenakis’ throat as his breath hitched, because the messenger had placed his other hand on the other side of Galenakis’ wrist.
This man’s hands had such a breadth that with the tips of his thumbs touching one another over Galenakis’ navel, his fingertips were nearly touching one another on his back, and Euclides could see how much their difference in size was affecting the impressionable young man.
“Who indeed?” the messenger rumbled. “I might take you to the Pythia at Delphi as an auspicious message — how could any look upon those fine features of yours and think you anything but a gift from the gods, an echo of Ganymede’s beauty, hm? Or perhaps to a fine, staunch leader in Macedonia — he might ride you himself, but better than that, perhaps he might ride a horse and station you ahead of him in the saddle, his cock between your thighs as he makes his journey. Or perhaps you should like to go further west than that — would you make a reverse of the journey Theseus made here on his way to Knossos, young man, and have me bring you to Athens? Who might I deliver you to there — Themistocles himself? No, no — a man of politics would not have the time to make use of you as you deserve. I could bring you to my old friends at the stadium. You might reward them for their hard work and training ahead of the next Olympic games.”
Galenakis was giggling faintly, blushing as dark as clay, and Euclides could see how eager he was as the messenger’s hands slowly slid from around his middle down the outside of his hips, down his thighs, seemed as though they were curling inward —
“Galeno!” roared Cleon from the other side of the room. “Are you paid to serve drinks, or am I mistaken? Have you been a pórnos under my purview all along!?”
“Sorry, sir, sorry,” Galenakis flustered, wriggling free, and the messenger laughed as he watched him scamper across the room to do his master’s bidding, turning back to his meal.
Euclides didn’t like him.
He often didn’t like messengers — they were often snooty about mercenary work, about the idea of anyone needing protection, given that messengers themselves went unmolested and unbothered about their sacred work in a way that someone so unimportant as a high priest or politician could never hope to be respected, and that was hardly where their high opinions of themselves stopped. Many of them were athletes with too many wreaths in their pasts to consider themselves anything but heroes, and they soon left modesty in their pasts as well.
Euclides walked across the room and settled at the seat across from the messenger, who immediately looked up with a mouthful of pork in his mouth, chewing, swallowing.
“Good evening,” he said pleasantly, his eyes roving up and down Euclides’ body before he took another sip of his wine. “Please,” he said, gesturing with one hand. “Join me.”
“Iridoro of Attica,” said Euclides.
The messenger had a smooth, rather resonant voice — it had a honey-like quality, came out of his mouth like something sweet with a natural drip. Euclides had none of that smoothness: his voice was rough, hoarse, and made of jagged angles, all broken glass and shards of crushed marble. He had taken three separate blows to the throat in the invasion of Athens, against Hippias, and even before then, his voice had had no great musical quality.
Iridoros blinked at hearing his own name, wiping at his mouth with a napkin.
“That’s me,” he said. “I beg your pardon — have we met before? I’ve no doubt I’d remember a face so handsome as yours, and that voice, ye gods. What brings a Spartan so far from home?”
“We have not met before,” said Euclides.
Iridoros waited patiently, chewing on an olive from the dish before him before delicately spitting out the pit.
“Ye-es…?” he prompted in wheedling tones. When Euclides did not respond, he asked, with faint impatience, “What is your name, Spartan?”
“Euclides,” said Euclides.
“And are you still a soldier, Euclides? A mercenary, perhaps?”
“A mercenary.”
“And who employs your services?”
“Menelaus.”
“Ah, I’m due to deliver a message to him tomorrow, come dawn,” Iridoros said.
“Yes,” Euclides agreed.
There was something distantly condescending in Iridoros’ expression as he smiled, his shadowed eyes narrowing slightly as he looked Euclides over again, more subtly this time, but with no especial obfuscation of the act.
“I see,” he said. “A night off, is it?”
“No.”
“I’m to understand you’re my protector this evening, rather than Menelaus’?”
“Do you need protection, Iridoro of Attica?”
“I don’t know, Euclides of Laconia,” Iridoros said immediately, his dripping voice dripping with charm — and seduction, too. Had he such confidence in his own charisma that he thought he might press Euclides beneath him, or was he so degenerate in his lusts that he would invite Euclides to play the active role between them? “Why don’t you tell me?”
“From yourself, perhaps,” said Euclides, and Iridoros laughed uproariously and very handsomely — up close, in contras to Euclides himself, he really did not seem so large. He had long, strong fingers and a frame that was built over with muscle, but while he was square, he wasn’t extremely broad, nor very tall. Euclides was the breadth of Iridoros and half again, and was some head or more taller than he was, though it was difficult to be sure, sitting down.
“Does Menelaus pay his mercenaries well, Euclides?”
“No.”
That earned another laugh, and at the same time, Iridoros pushed a plate of cheese pies toward him. “Eat with me, then,” Iridoros said. “We might share other things too, before the night is over — do you know young Galenos well?”
“You will not sully him,” Euclides told Iridoros seriously, and with his mouth full of bread drizzled with honey, Iridoros now frowned, chewing, swallowing.
“Sully him?” he repeated. “My dear friend, I hardly plan to spread poison on his skin and smear dirt through his hair. On the contrary, I’ll be showing that boy a very good time indeed.”
“No,” Euclides corrected him.
“No?” Iridoros repeated, and laughed again — it was intended to dismiss him, but Euclides could hear the taint of indignation in it, the slight hardness in the forced amusement. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Euclides of Laconia. Is Galenos a special friend of yours?”
For a man with a voice that dripped, it was no hardship at all to drip implication from the word, and Euclides cared very little for the trick.
“Galenakis is young and impressionable,” Euclides said, and then repeated his earlier statement: “You will not sully him.” For good measure, he added, “I will not permit it.”
“Is this at Menelaus’ command?”
“No.”
“Who appointed you my gaoler, then?”
“I do not gaol you,” said Euclides. “I make no prisoner of you. I do not impugn your liberties.”
“And yet you would deprive me of a means to fulfil my sexual liberties.”
“Pick and choose of the city’s pornoia, if you would use a boy,” Euclides told him. “You will not use him.”
“He’s hardly untouched — he might be a citizen, but all that separates him from a common pórnos is that he takes no payment for his fine work, he — ”
Euclides was indeed a head taller than Iridoros — two heads taller, perhaps. The height difference between them was made very clear in this moment, with Euclides’ broad hand gripping about Iridoros’ narrow throat, holding him off the ground. His stool had clattered back onto the floor, and so when Iridoros kicked out his muscular legs, they had nothing to land on, nothing to gain purchase on, except Euclides himself.
His voice did not sound quite so musical as he choked and wheezed, his long-fingered hands coming to grab about Euclides’ wrists, one of his sandled feet bracing itself on the heavy meat of Euclides’ thigh, the other somewhere in the region of his waist. For all this purchase to keep himself from purchase, he found he could not wrench himself free of Euclides’ grip, superlatively strong as he was, although he could feel the downward pressure Iridoros’ muscular legs were able to exert.
“You can’t,” he choked out, “I’m an hemerodromos, you can’t do this to me — !”
Euclides looked up at him impassively, and then tightened his grip. Iridoros’ pale green eyes looked very pretty indeed as they bulged, as he tried to force a breath down his throat despite the fact that Euclides had closed it for him. Spit was building up on his lips, sweat shining on the messenger’s pale skin, and as he kicked and struggled, one of the pins in his hair came free, and a long braid fell free from the others, landing on his shoulder.
He had not enough breath to string words together, but he let out some vague, wordless utterances, and Euclides waited until he could see the light dimming in his eyes before he used both hands to set the messenger gently on the ground. Holding him upright with a grip on the back of his tunic as he reached with his other hand to return Iridoros’ stool to position, the hemerodromos spluttering and gasping in great lungfuls of air, Euclides then nudged him back to sit, and poured him some water, which Iridoros drank down greedily.
“I do not suggest that you test me,” Euclides advised, examining with mild interest the red bruising that was beginning to show around Iridoros’ pale, freckled throat. “I am neither issuing a challenge nor provocation, Iridoros — I am making a statement of fact. You will not sully the boy Galenakis, nor invite him into your bed, nor him into yours.”
“I’ll have you stoned for this,” Iridoros said — his voice was slightly hoarse, but for all the strain in it, it remained as smooth and fine as music. “My vocation is sacrosanct, misthios — you are not to lay a hand on a messenger in the course of his duties!”
“It is not your duty to corrupt a young man and use him as a vessel for your perversions,” Euclides replied. “Priests and politicians have been tried and exiled for as much.”
“Euclides,” said Cleon at Euclides’ shoulder. “Are you, ah… making friends again?”
“He certainly is,” said Iridoros, whose expression of indignation was slowly fading — inexplicably, his gaze had once more settled on Euclides, and he was looking him over as though he were a strange and difficult to comprehend message, as though there were some encoded meaning beneath his skin that Iridoros had yet to decipher, but knew had to be present. “Honourable host, bring Euclides and I another jug of wine, a second glass, and if you could possibly manage it, more of these keftedes, they’re really perfectly cooked.”
Euclides saw that Cleon’s expression was politely baffled, and his tone was about the same as he said, “Are you… sure, messenger? Euclides is a good boy,” Cleon’s meaty hand clapped down on Euclides’ shoulder, having to stretch up somewhat to reach, “but he can be a little… rigid, hm? I can send him home for the evening.”
“By no means,” Iridoros said immediately, coughing delicately against the back of his wrist before taking another long draught of water. “As Theseus before me, I plan to unravel my skein of yarn, and he is the skein I have chosen.”
Cleon’s bafflement faded to one of moderate concern. “Erm,” he said. “I don’t know that you should do that, sir.”
“Your advice is much appreciated, sir, but I’ve no need of it,” said Iridoros. “Euclides, handsome bust of a warrior you are, sit down, will you?”
Euclides sat once more, and Cleon looked helplessly between the two of them before he exhaled and automatically wiped his palms down the front of his apron, the movement habitual rather than for any particular purpose.
“More meatballs and more wine,” Cleon said. “Anything else?”
“I’m evidently proving something of a distraction to young Galenakis,” said Iridoros, speaking to Cleon even though he maintained eye contact with Euclides. “Starry-eyed thing the boy is. Keep him away from me for the rest of the evening, will you?”
Cleon seemed visibly relieved, and said, “Oh, yes, gladly.” When Iridoros arched an eyebrow, he cleared his throat and tried desperately to amend it to, “Erm, I mean, if it’s not too much trouble, sir, I can — ”
“It’s no trouble at all,” said Iridoros, and Cleon moved across the room toward the kitchen. Iridoros watched him go, then matched his gaze with Euclides’ again. “Happy?” he asked.
Euclides reached across the table for a pie, and too a slow, careful bite out of it, chewing, swallowing.
“Very good,” said Iridoros. “Is there a great deal wrong with you, Euclides of Laconia?”
“Wrong?” Euclides repeated.
“Do people often make remarks such as, “What’s your problem?” and “Are you fucking mad?” in your direction, or about you whilst in your earshot?”
Euclides shrugged. “From time to time,” he said.
“I thought perhaps it was so,” said Iridoros, although if the idea bothered him any, that did not show in his expression. Idly, he was rubbing at the new bruising around the top of his throat. “You are a Spartan?”
“Yes,” Euclides said.
“What made you come to Crete?”
“Employment.”
“With Menelaus?”
“Yes.”
“Is he a good employer?”
Euclides shrugged.
“Yes, not generous, you did mention. But is he sensible, honourable?”
Euclides shrugged again. “I do not think of such things.”
“I hardly believe that,” said Iridoros — his voice had dropped in volume, and once more it took on a more seductive lilt. There was something soft and sensuous in his words as he went on, “You strike me, Euclides of Laconia, to be quite concerned with such things as honour and morality. You’re certainly protective of young Galenakis.”
“He does not know yet the boundaries a man such as him must be governed by,” said Euclides. “He would be so softened by kind words as to allow you to penetrate him, not merely satisfy yourself between his thighs, or against his belly.”
“Not entirely softened, I promise you,” said Iridoros, and when Euclides scowled at him, he laughed and made a peace motion with his hands. “Come now, come now, Euclides, he’s quite safe from me and my sexual appetites for the evening, lay down your sword — or, more relevantly, in our case, your fists. Have you ever been penetrated, Euclides? Not by some sword or weapon or that manner of more traumatic penetration.”
Euclides, who had just opened his mouth to reply, closed it again.
“No, I meant by a cock,” Iridoros said — he ignored Cleon’s mildly scandalised expression as he set another plate of keftedes on the table, pouring for Euclides before he left the second jug of wine between them. “In your arse, or perhaps even your mouth?”
“May Zeus strike you down.”
“May Zeus call on Hermes to do his bidding, for Zeus himself would not be fast enough to catch me,” said Iridoros, and Euclides wrinkled his nose at this hubris, which made Iridoros chuckle softly. “Speaking of Zeus himself — do you not think he cleft Ganymede nearly in two, sinking into his arse, burying himself in his wine-bearer’s tight and welcoming guts?”
“Beautiful Galenakis may be, Ganymedean even,” said Euclides, “but Zeus, you are not.”
“And you?”
“I am not Zeus.”
“No, darling, I see that, though I’ve no doubt you’ve a fine bolt of lightning between those tree trunks you call legs. But has a man ever buried his cock in you — or have you sheathed your cock in another man?”
“No,” said Euclides.
Iridoros’ smile took on a smoky quality. “Would you like to?” he asked.
Euclides sipped his drink instead of answering, then took a keftede from the plate he was offered.
* * *
It was raining heavily the next morning, but Iridoros still arrived at Menelaus’ villa before dawn had come, the scant bits of sky showing through the dark clouds peachy where they weren’t grey. Euclides stood to attention and watched as one of the slaves gave him a towel to dry himself off, wiping off his feet on the mat, before he came further into the villa.
Euclides hung back, not particularly interested in the message or its contents — he only came forward when Menelaus called him to.
“Euclides will be accompanying you,” Menelaus said.
“I beg your pardon?”
They had parted ways outside of the taverna late last night, although Iridoros had invited Euclides to return with him to his boarding house multiple times, and had also suggested perhaps he return to Euclides to his own bed.
Sometime between now and last night, he had evidently combed out his hair — instead of eight or ten fine braids, he was only wearing two larger ones, and they held back the high-worn tail of the rest of his hair, which was long enough that it brushed the middle of his shoulders. He had had time to unbraid it, but not to wash it — there were crimped edges and shaping to the loose-worn hair that showed the evidence of the tighter braids they’d been in before.
The bruises around his throat were beginning to darken from red to purple, and on one side of his neck, you could see the distinct prints from Euclides’ fingertips. Menelaus had taken a moment to peer at Iridoros’ neck when he’d come in, but he hadn’t made any mention of it.
They had talked a great deal over their meal, or at least, Iridoros had — he had talked about the journey from Thessaloniki, talked about the various tournaments he’d won in his youth as an athlete, talked about growing up outside of Athens, talked about food, talked about wine. He’d asked Euclides some questions here and there — how long he had been a mercenary (twenty years); if he had fought in any battles Iridoros might have heard of (he had been mildly interested when Iridoros had mentioned the overthrow of Hippias, but had mostly pivoted then to asking what he thought of Athens as a city); what food he liked (any of it), what men or women (none of them).
“None of them?”
“Not in the way you mean.”
“Some manner of ascetic, are you? Or merely naturally dampened — you have no appetites in that arena?”
“I have appetites.”
“No attractions, then?”
Euclides hadn’t much liked that question, had somewhat distrusted the mildness of Iridoros’ curiosity, and had allowed the conversation to move on.
“You will have need of a guard,” Menelaus said. “You’ll need to pass through wilderness to reach the mountain temple, and while no man will molest a messenger in the course of his duties, wolves or boar or other wild beasts will make no such distinction.”
“And this great lug of a man will keep pace with me as I run, will I?” Iridoros demanded, gesturing to Euclides.
“You can take a chariot once you make the mainland,” Menelaus said, shrugging his shoulders. “It is not a message of desperate urgency, and in any case, you’ll be travelling over bog and thorny ground once the road runs out. I wouldn’t have you run over that land — it wouldn’t be safe for anybody.”
“A chariot,” Iridoros repeated scornfully, and shook his head. “I will deliver your message to the temple, as you please, sir, but you’re only wasting my time and your own money.”
“Oh, I’m not paying Euclides for this — he’s leaving my service.”
Iridoros blinked, and then looked back at Euclides. “You didn’t mention last night you were retiring.”
“Last night?” Menelaus repeated, seeming amused.
“I am called to the temple for service,” said Euclides. “Same as you.”
“If you’re going there already, why send me at all?”
“He isn’t a messenger — people can see he’s a mercenary as soon as look at him,” said Menelaus. “That you’re going in the same direction is merely coincidence.”
“I see,” said Iridoros, wrinkling his fine, freckled nose. “I’ve never much cared for coincidences. Do you much like them, Euclides of Laconia?”
“I believe in the gods,” said Euclides. “Coincidences, I do not.”
Iridoros stared up at him, one hand on his hip, and then he exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose, before turning and regarding Menelaus seriously, and exhaustedly. “Has he always been, if you don’t mind my asking, so fucking odd?”
“Always,” said Menelaus. “But he’ll keep you safe from all that might threaten you.”
“And if he threatens me?” Iridoros asked, arching his eyebrows.
“I would not,” said Euclides. “Not without cause.”
“I suggest you don’t let it come to that, young man,” said Menelaus pleasantly. “If Euclides sees fit to threaten you, you’ve no hope in Hades.”
Iridoros looked up at Euclides suspiciously, and Euclides smiled.
“Don’t do that,” Iridoros barked at him. “It’s unnerving.”
Euclides let his face go slack.
“Thank you,” said Iridoros crisply, and looked back to Menelaus.
* * *
They sailed from Irakleio to Piraeus, where they hired a cart and a pair of horses to drive on to Mount Smolikas, and in the meantime, they’d deliver a few messages and parcels along the way.
They slept in separate beds in the boarding house, and Euclides watched Iridoros in the late hours of the night, his hands gripping at the pillow beneath his head, expression tensed, cheek pressed tight into the fabric, as his hips thrust rabbit-fast into the sheets beneath him. When he reached his peak, Euclides watched the tension slowly release and eke from his face, from the whole of his body — the veins and tendons no longer tensed in his arms, his bowed back straightened out, and he melted slowly into the bed with a long, slow sigh.
A few minutes into a doze, he turned his head, and regarded Euclides somnolently.
“You don’t touch yourself,” Iridoros said, “nor fuck boys, nor fuck girls. You don’t, I hope, fuck goats or horses, or other animals?”
“No,” said Euclides.
“Only wank in the baths, maybe?”
“I do not.”
“You must get your release somewhere,” said Iridoros.
“Somewhere,” Euclides agreed.
Iridoros looked as though he meant to take this line of questioning further, but he was sleeping before he could manage it.
* * *
It was a few days later that they made it to the base of the mountain, handing off the cart in the nearest village, with Iridoros making the assurance they would return for it in the coming days.
“Do you know the temple we’re going to?” Iridoros asked. “A shrine to Zeus on the top of the mountain?”
“There is a temple to Zeus a few miles south,” said the stablehand, apparently confused as to what Iridoros was referring to, glancing up toward the mount and scanning the upward incline as though she would see a tabernacle or an altar on some crest where she’d never seen one before. “What shrine is this?”
“I know the way,” said Euclides, and they set off on foot, Euclides with a satchel over his shoulder of a few offerings — good wine, a bushel of wheat, some flints and stones from the caves on Crete.
They did not run.
He wondered how much it had bothered Iridoros, these past days, that he had not been able to work his muscled thighs and strong calves, that he was not able to sprint across the country in the ways in which he was accustomed — in the horse and cart, their travels were slow, not even rivalling that of the charioteers.
“You’ve been here before?” Iridoros asked mildly as they stepped from the path and began to pick their way through the many olive trees, toward the shadowed place where the olive trees grew bigger, the spans of their leaves and largest branches wider, where the sun struggled to pierce through the gaps in the canopy they made.
“No,” said Euclides.
“… No,” Iridoros repeated, and then softly laughed, shaking his head. “What a curious man you are, Euclides of Laconia.”
“Am I?” Euclides asked, and ducked his head under an olive branch.
“This is wetland ahead of us,” Iridoros said. “Watch your step.”
“Yes,” Euclides agreed.
As they crossed beneath the spread of the larger olive trees, the whole of the world seemed to become darker, not only beneath the natural canopy of the olive trees. From afar, dappled pieces of sunlight had come through the trees and shone on the dusty floors like so many coins cast aside and glittering, but now they were stepping over that same ground, the light had darkened and softened so much that those coins seemed a more ghostly silver now than gold.
The air had become cooler, settling over their skins like a morning frost, and Euclides exhaled as they kept on walking. Euclides kept bent double to move under the lowest branches — Iridoros just had to duck his head here and there.
Euclides moved carefully, setting his feet where the cool, damp ground beneath them was solid and gave him proper support — he was a very heavy, dense man, had been for all his life, and if he sank into the marsh, if one of his feet slipped and was swallowed up by the swampy muck disguised by thick grass and surface algae, he’d have no easy job of tearing himself free.
This sort of land, unholy union of river and soil, was alive as any creature with blood and a heartbeat, and it hungered for all it could swallow down into its depths.
“I don’t like marshland,” said Iridoros quietly. His hand was resting on Euclides’ lower back, and he followed him very closely — Euclides did not need to look back at him to know that Iridoros was copying Euclides’ steps exactly. He could hear the tension and the anxiety in Iridoros’ voice. “Never have done. I watched a girl fall into the bog, once, when I was young — we tried to get her free, the rest of us, do it the way we’d been taught. Spread out on our bellies on the floor, distribute our weight, encourage her to do the same, you know, to try to lean forward and bring her legs up, but she was just too frightened, too panicked. She kept kicking, kept screaming, and then there was a moment where her screams started becoming, becoming wet, and muffled, when they started to bubble…”
In the week or so Euclides had known him, he had never heard such weight and tension in Iridoros’ voice, such genuine, quavering emotion, such grief — never such fear, either.
“You will not drown here,” Euclides told him.
“Comforting, I’m sure,” said Iridoros unconvincingly, and they kept on walking together, the two of them.
Euclides took two steps forward, three, feeling for the tree roots, the dryer earth, the islands of stone, crossing over the wetter depths that ran between them, and Iridoros followed after him, stepped into the ghosts of Euclides own sandal prints.
The air was getting colder, the sky darker, the summer’s day evaporating into a winter’s night even though it was only some hours after dawn, but it seemed to Euclides that the messenger was so focused on the steps they were taking together that he barely even noticed.
“Your parents?” Euclides asked.
“My parents?” Iridoros repeated. “My mother is a very good weaver, made beautiful work, was widely admired. My father is a poet, although a middling one — his work isn’t very widely renowned.”
“Why did she marry him?”
“I’ve wondered that myself, from time to time,” Iridoros said consideringly. “Because he asked first, I think. She’s a very patient woman, my mother, perhaps too patient — and never ambitious.”
“You were always ambitious.”
“Yes, of course,” Iridoros said. “I liked to run from the out, liked to run, to jump, to climb. I was a fierce competitor as soon as I knew what competition was.”
“You’re named for Iris,” Euclides said. “Perhaps you should have been named for Nike.”
“No, Iris was right,” Iridoros argued immediately. “I’m a fine messenger, Euclides of Laconia — one of the best.”
“As you say,” said Euclides.
His next step required he use the whole of his long stride, and as Iridoros attempted to copy him, he stumbled. The noise of breathless terror that choked out of the base of his throat was sharp, splitting the air as severely might a thunder clap, and Euclides lunged back and caught him around his waist before he could fall into the clabbering muck beneath them.
Iridoros’ hair, last night, he had tied into one long, thick braid and pinned it in place with every pin and clasp he had — as he clung desperately to Euclides’ arm, trembling, staring fearfully down into the bubble of the hungry wetland beneath them, he wondered how heavy it must be on top of his head, all that hair.
“Why don’t you cut it?” Euclides asked as he pulled Iridoros with him onto solid ground, and the messenger, breathing heavily, sweat shining on his skin, looked up at him with incomprehension shimmering in his green eyes.
It was pleasant, to watch him, his routine. Euclides had never had a wife, had known that such a thing was never his due nor his destiny, but he wondered if that was what it would have felt like, having one. Every evening, watching her carefully comb out and style her hair, watching her paint and rouge her face — granted, Iridoros lined and shadowed his eyes rather than rouging his cheeks and lining his lips, but the ritual seemed as though it might be the same.
“My hair?” Iridoros asked.
“It’s very long,” Euclides said.
Iridoros looked up at Euclides’ own hair, which he had always kept rather short — young men he’d grown up alongside, fought alongside, had kept thin braids down the backs of their necks, or had worn their hair down the shoulder, but the weight of it had never sat well with him.
“I made a dedication to Nike, as a young man — that so long as I reigned victorious, I would not cut it. That I would let it grow and grow until I lost a race, and then I never did. When I became a messenger, I made the same pledge to my namesake — that if I ever failed in my duty, if I did not deliver a message as bidden, I would shear my hair then.”
“Impressive,” said Euclides, and Iridoros shivered, seeming to all at once realise the cold of the dank, grey grassland they were standing on, the two of them now standing at the very foot of the mountain.
Iridoros did not fight him, did not hesitate, as Euclides took him by the upper arm and led Iridoros with him, not to find a mountain path, but through a cave mouth ahead of them, a crack that Iridoros just slipped through, but that Euclides had to carefully squeeze himself past.
Iridoros let out a sigh of relief as soon as Euclides came in behind him, blocking off the cave entrance — it was noticeably warmer here, under the stone, even though it should have been cooler, but the torches on the walls emitted more heat than one might think.
“Am I going to fail in my duties now, Euclides of Laconia?” asked Iridoros in a very quiet, very stable voice. There was no quaver to it now, and although he shivered, it was not a continuous tremble, but one conscious shudder, like a cat shaking off the damp of a rainstorm. “Is something very dreadful going to happen to me here?”
“Why do you say that?” Euclides asked.
“You accompany me to this strange place — a coincidence, my employer tells me, but you know the way where those nearby do not. A temple, you say, my employer says, and yet the people nearby know nothing of it. You lead me through a bog that gets colder and darker, danker and deeper, and instead of walking up the mount ahead of us, you lead me now into a cave. Are you going to kill me here, Euclides of Laconia? Were you more offended by me at our first meeting than first you let on?”
“Offended?” Euclides repeated, and then he softly laughed, surprised, and shook his head. “You are in no danger here, Iridoro of Attica. I will not hurt you.”
Taking the other man by each of his shoulders, he slowly turned Iridoros around, and then nudged him ahead of him, through the cave passage. Iridoros’ breath hitched for a moment in his pretty throat — the bruises Euclides had given him a week ago had faded to nothing at all, leaving the freckled flesh unmarred again — but then he obeyed the silent command.
“Why am I here, Euclides of Laconia?” asked Iridoros. His voice echoed slightly off of the cave walls, and Euclides walked behind him, shadowing him. He felt the warmth of the messenger’s body, and as they began to move up the incline of the indoor path, Euclides reached out and took one of the pins from Iridoros’ hair.
He took in a little breath, then sighed, and Euclides removed another.
He caught Iridoros’ braid before it could fall clumsily free, and kept drawing out the pins and then the clasps from the messenger’s hair, holding his braid up before he slowly let it down, a long tail that hung down the messenger’s back, down to the very small of it.
Euclides set the pins and clasps into one of the pockets of his bag, and as they kept walking, the air got warmer, thicker, smelt earthier, richer. He pulled the golden ribbon fastening the end of Iridoros’ braid free, and hesitated before he then used his fingers to comb out the mane.
It was very soft under his fingers, soft and almost silken, and something in Euclides’ heart soared at the sensation of it, the knowledge he was brushing his fingers through something so very fine and so very beautiful, a natural gift that had been tended and loved in honour of the gods for decades on end.
“Who were your parents?” Iridoros asked — he is shocked, apparently, by the volume of his own rich, musical voice against the stone cavern walls around them, jumping, and Iridoros catches hold of him to keep him from falling, then gently nudges him to continue.
“My mother was a helot,” Euclides said.
“She was?” Iridoros asks in surprise, turning his head to look back at him askance, and Euclides nods his head.
“Yes,” he said. “She farmed wheat, for the most part — it was the same fine colour as your hair, although it did not amount to such golden treasure as this.”
“Golden treasure,” Iridoros repeated, and he let out a soft, almost giddy sound, one that reminded Euclides of Galenakis’ flusterment in the face of the messenger’s flirtation. “And your father?”
“My mother prayed for freedom,” said Euclides. “One day she walked out into the midst of the wheat field she and the other helots had been tending — they were very ill-treated. She was hungry, and thirsty, and she had a great many bruises and cuts on her back from the beating her master had given her that morning, for protesting the treatment of herself and the others.
“In the very middle of the field, she fell to her knees and she sobbed, knowing that she could not be seen from farther away, beneath the highest point of the wheat. Her tears stained the dirt and made red mud of the ground — she fell forward, dug her fingers into the floor, pressed her face into the earth, and begged for solace. She begged any god that would soothe her — Demeter, Persephone, Apollo… She named every Olympian, and then named Zeus.”
“And Zeus came to her, did he?” asked Iridoros in little more than a whisper.
“A bolt of lightning struck the ground before her,” said Euclides. “Inches from her face — on a clear, sunny day, with no warning whatsoever, the bolt struck the ground and made her tears sizzle and bubble from the dirt as they heated and evaporated; the wheat around her caught fire, crackled and burned. In the midst of it, she was trapped, and she heaved in a horrible gasp, surprised her lungs didn’t fill with smoke, and wondered if this was a cruel joke on the part of the gods — she had begged for freedom, after all. Would she receive freedom through death?
“The fire burned on a controlled path, a path that she followed, stepping over the ashen ground, until it led her far from the farm on which she had been born, the farm she had worked for so long. She ended up miles and miles away, an older man waiting for her in a small homestead.”
“Zeus?”
“He said it was hers, if she wished it — the land, the sheep. All would believe her a widow, and treat her as such.”
“If he let him fuck her?”
“The way she told it,” Euclides said, “it was less part of his gift, and more a natural display of her gratitude.”
“Euclides,” Iridoros murmured. “Son of Zeus.”
“If you believe such things,” said Euclides, and nudged the messenger forward, out into the bright sunshine.
They were on the mountain top, and the white marble altar, polished to a shine, glittered almost as much as the gold trinkets and statuettes on top of it. A natural spring, shallow and shining a similar pale green as Iridoros’ eyes, was right before it, and Euclides nudged Iridoros to stand in the water.
“I’m getting it muddy,” he protested.
“Are you?” Euclides replied as he bent to unlace his sandals.
The water remained very clear, and Iridoros stared down, uncomprehending, as Euclides drew from him his sandals, and then began to unbuckle his tunic. Iridoros allowed himself to be undressed, looking out over the edge of the clifftop, to the valleys and peaks and fields of the lands far below them.
“Shouldn’t it be cold?” Iridoros asked.
“It is a warm embrace,” Euclides said. “A welcome.”
“You talked in paragraphs before,” Iridoros said. “It was quite nice — that rasping voice you have. I like to listen to it.”
Euclides’ cheeks felt slightly hot. “Yours is a rare opinion,” he said.
“Yours is a rare voice,” said Iridoros, and Euclides’ cheeks burned even hotter.
Euclides took up a cloth and began to wash it up Iridoros’ naked calves, his thighs, and Iridoros exhaled and leaned back into Euclides’ body as he washed him clean. He was careful not to wet his hair too much.
“The water’s very warm,” he said quietly. “Is this a mountain or a volcano?”
“It’s not so warm as lava, I don’t think,” said Euclides, and banded one arm loosely around Iridoros’ belly and pulled him back, scrubbing the cloth over his chest, his shoulders, the base of his neck.
“Are you just a mercenary, or a priest as well?” asked Iridoros, and Euclides softly laughed, watching water drip down the line of Iridoros’ spine, down between the fine cleft between his wide, heavy cheeks, catching on his sack, dripping down again between his thighs.
“One doesn’t need to be a priest to make an offering,” said Euclides, dropping the cloth aside and drizzling oil over his fingers — when he pressed them, slick at their tips, against the warm, welcoming opening of Iridoros’ arse, he let out a soft, sharp noise, spreading his thighs further apart. “I suspected you of taking the passive role in the past.”
“You should try it some time,” said Iridoros. “There’s no shame in it.”
“No shame, perhaps,” Euclides said, “but we each of us have our roles in this world, and that is not mine.”
“Fucked many men, have you?” Iridoros asked, a slight strain in his voice as he bore back on Euclides’ fingers. He couldn’t believe the tightness of Iridoros’ arse, yet at the same time was stunned by how easily it opened up to him, and the oil on his fingers well-slicked the velvety smooth skin on the inside of his ring. His mouth was dry, imagining this tightness around his cock, a far tighter grip than his own hand could ever manage, so much hotter, slicker.
Iridoros was silent a moment, though he then grunted breathlessly as Euclides spread his fingers apart, spreading his hole open. Euclides was no small man, his cock a good deal larger than Iridoros’ own, in line with the larger breadth of his own body — how was it to fit? How would he force it inside?
“But women?” Iridoros asked.
“You’re prepared enough,” Euclides said, nudging him forward, and their feet both stepped through the natural spring and forward, leaving wet foot prints on the warm stone beneath them until Iridoros was tipped forward with his forearms resting on the cool of the marble altar. It was beautifully carved and polished — it must have been a job to carry it up the mountainside.
He kept an eye on the fine lines of Iridoros’ back, his beautiful wide thighs, his fat arse, the muscle on him, as he unbuckled his own armour and dropped it aside.
“You haven’t — ” Iridoros said, and let out a breathless laugh. “You mean to tell me that you, misthios, at some forty-something years of age, have never wet your cock in anybody? That you’re completely untried and untested?” He laughed again, and his expression as smug and smirking as he looked back at Euclides’ over his shoulder — his cock, a pretty thing, almost as pretty as his face, swung seductively from side to side as he moved his hips. “Are you sure you won’t pop your cork as soon as you settle inside me? Darling, maybe I should be the active one between us — I’m made for marathons where you aren’t.”
“It wasn’t my time yet,” Euclides said evenly, no more embarrassed now than he ever had been — a thrill is bubbling under his skin, a sort of tension, and he can feel the air around them getting hotter, thicker, crackling over his skin and making the little hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. “You have stamina — I’ve had patience.”
He didn’t need to say a prayer, didn’t need to speak his dedication out loud — he’d known since he first felt his cock hard against his palm all his life would lead to this, that after every battle, every job, every fight, every job and meal and long night and long, long journey, this would be the end of it — the end, and a new beginning.
This dedication, hot and hard and rough, a sacrifice — yet bloodless.
“Darling,” Iridoros was still chattering on in that way of his as Euclides slicked his hard cock with oil, squeezing it in his palm. The air was thickening on their every side, felt heavy on his skin, and Iridoros’ hair was affected by the static — Euclides nudged it over one of his shoulders to get it out of the way as he covered Iridoros’ back, but he could see the electricity in the air affecting it, catching the air, rising up a little. “You really think you can — ”
Euclides barely had to force his cock into Iridoros’ arse at all — it was very tight, sublimely so, an incredible wet heat on every side of his prick, but he slid inside with perfect ease until he was sheathed to the very hilt, his bollocks knocking against Iridoros’.
The messenger let out a breathy, whimpering keen.
“Worth the wait,” Euclides rumbled in Iridoros’ ear, feeling his body tremble beneath Euclides’ own. “Have any further smart comments to make, hemerodromos?”
“Actually, seeing as you ask,” Iridoros started to say, a lot of tension in his voice as Euclides slowly slid back and treasured the sensation of it, the desperate clutch of Iridoros’ wet heat around him, the tightening of the muscle at his ring. Before he could go on, Euclides slammed his hips forward again with a sound like a thunderclap, and at the same time, the heavens opened.
Iridoros let out a loud noise, overwhelmed with sensation and scrabbling helplessly at the marble surface beneath them as fat, heavy drops rained down onto them from above, soaking Euclides’ back, soaking into his own hair, and wetting the marble beneath them. More thunder sounded in the distance, dark clouds rolling over their heads and the sun abruptly blotted out.
The air was still hot for all the rain was cooler, and even if it weren’t, nothing would deter Euclides from his current sacred task, from the rough slam of his cock into Iridoros’ tight arse, from the whining noises that were eking out of his throat. He could feel the heat of the other man’s body, feel his muscles tensing and twitching, feel his hole tightening greedily around Euclides whenever he drew back, as though to keep him sheathed within him forever.
“Fuck,” Iridoros bit out sharply, and he let out a noise of fear as lightning struck a few dozen feet of them, the flash of it making contact with the mountain stone illuminating them both. Euclides could feel the weight of the lightning on his skin, feel the thrum of the storm in his veins, and it felt good.
It felt powerful.
He was cleaving Iridoros in two, every thrust of his cock into the wet furrow of him like another bolt of lightning striking home, and Iridoros was writhing as though he’d never felt such ecstasy as this — and surely, he never had.
“Too big,” he whimpered into his hands, rain-slick from the storm whipping around their heads and sliding on the marble altar.
“You can take it,” Euclides told him.
“Too much!” Iridoros protested.
“You love it,” Euclides replied.
“You’ll kill me!”
“I won’t,” Euclides corrected him. “But I’ll take you to Elysium all the same.”
Gripping tight around Iridoros’ narrow middle, he held him fast as he fucked inside him, using him, and fuck, fuck, but this was wonderful, it was perfect. To be swallowed up and so perfectly sheathed, to take his pleasure from another man’s body, and such a powerful one, too — there was no small satisfaction in reducing smug, superior Iridoros to this, to whimpers and whines and grunts and moans, his thighs spreading eagerly for more of Euclides’ cock, inviting him inside him.
He knew when Iridoros came because another thunder clap sounded, making his ears ring — Euclides gripped him around his muscular knees and lifted him clear off the ground as he felt his hole tighten and flutter, and laughed as he saw the white pump of his spending cock over the altar, blending immediately in, the same colour, slick with water.
“Good Gods,” Iridoros gasped out, disbelieving — Euclides had folded him up to bounce him in place with ease, and he wished he had a mirror to see Iridoros’ face as Euclides held his knees up in line with his shoulders and fucked inside him, each thrust making his spent, softening cock bounce and swing. Iridoros’ hair, long and slick with the rain, was sticking to both of their bodies, but Euclides didn’t care.
He cared about the tightness of Iridoros’ perfect body, cared about chasing his own orgasm, could feel the tension inside him, his cock harder than it ever had been, his balls drawn up tight and churning with need and want and desperate closeness to the edge, and then —
He roared as he tumbled over the edge, feeling more lightning flash, hearing the loud crackle of it and the searing sizzle of water around them evaporating, felt the rumbling thrill and shock of it all over his skin, felt the tingle —
Iridoros was breathing heavily, looking dizzied, his body limp, as Euclides finished emptying himself inside him, finishing riding him to his own completion, and slowly unfolded him, setting him down on the ground.
Iridoros looked at him with glazed eyes, letting out a breathless laugh — the rain was slowing over their heads, the clouds beginning to retreat and dissipate as though there’d never been any rain at all, and Iridoros sat back on the altar, rain dripping down his skin, Euclides’ spend dripping down the inside of his thigh.
“You were pure lightning for a moment there,” Iridoros said after a few minutes of the two of them in silence together, breathing heavily, regaining their respective composures. “I could feel it inside me, feel the full force of you.”
“We each inherit one thing or another from our fathers,” said Euclides, shrugging his shoulders. “I was never told so directly, but was led to believe fucking any other man or woman before now — and fucking any other but you first, here, on this mountain, now — would have killed them dead. Makes sense.”
“This was a dedication of sorts to your father.”
“Yes.”
“As when one cooks a meal, and the gods taste of that meal.”
“I suppose.”
“You wet your cock for the first time, and shared that experience with your father.”
“You seem anxious about the matter,” said Euclides mildly. “Worried he didn’t enjoy the ride?”
Iridoros slapped him on the arm, and Euclides laughed, advancing on him. Iridoros’ lips were trembling under Euclides’ as he kissed the messenger and tasted his tongue, tasted the sweat from his face clinging to his lips. He scent of ozone was thick between them, and felt gathered between their lips.
“I haven’t laid down my message,” said Iridoros.
“I sent the message, Menelaus acting on my behalf,” said Euclides. “The message was only: I come here, gladly, to be fucked before the open skies.”
“Oh,” said Iridoros, and laughed. His thighs were shivering, his knees weak, but he nonetheless clumsily wrapped his legs around Euclides’ waist and pulled him closer. “Fucked twice, didn’t it say?”
“It didn’t specify.”
“What if it did?”
“It didn’t.”
Iridoros sighed emphatically, gripping Euclides by the jaw and looking him in the eye. “Yes, alright,” he said, patiently impatient. “And what if it did?”
Euclides smiled at him, stroking a thumb up and down his side. “Let me tie up your hair first,” he said quietly. “Keep it from getting tangled.”
“How chivalrous of you — revolting,” Iridoros said. “Alright. Tie my hair up, Euclides of Laconia, Son of Zeus, and then fuck me once again.”
“And I have other offerings to make as we — ”
“Euclides,” Iridoros whined, and Euclides, laughing, set about making his new messenger, sun-kissed and lightning-touched, happy.
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