Archive of Our Own ^beta

[Track: Hidden — Cocktail)

I see him there. He stands with his back facing me. His broad shoulders, their blades as agile as a bird’s, golden in the lantern-light.

I touch him there, gently. He shudders.

“God,” he sighs, still shivering. “God, please.”

I touch his slim waist. He is wearing nothing but a rag there. I slip my hand under it to the warm skin beneath. It falls, easily, to his feet.

I stare at the revealed golden swells of his buttocks, the strength of his thighs, how soft the dimples at the base of his spine are.

I shudder, bite my tongue. How I want to sink my teeth into that dip, into that bundle of innocent pleasure. My fingers slide down until they are curved along with his cheek. He sighs.

I lower myself to my knees. I can see the dark skin of his cock dangling between his legs, like forbidden fruit.

“Chatra,” he breathes. “You cannot touch me.”

“Why?”

“I am not yours to touch.”

I put my lips to the rising swell of his ass, yet without touching. His whole body stiffens.

“Please,” I whisper against his skin. I can already feel him swelling, can smell his arousal, can taste it thick on my tongue. “Please.”

“You must go back to your family,” he says. “You must rule this country.”

“Not without you.”

“Yes,” he sighs. “Yes, without me.”

“But you are a free man,” I say, and dig my fingers into his hips, just to hear his sharp intake of breath. My mouth waters at the feeling of his skin filling my palm. “You are free to do as you wish.”

“Oh,” he shakes, “but I am not free, Chat. You know that.”

I grit my teeth, in pain. “Khem.”

“I am not free, because you have enslaved me.”

He turns around and my hands drop. I am face to face with his smooth, golden abdomen, and the trail of hair that ventures down, down into the bushel of his manhood, and my mouth waters at the sight of it, how limp and swollen it looks, how it would fit so easily in my mouth, the bitter-sweet tang of it.

“Oh, Khem,” I beg. My fingers spasm at my sides. “Let me, please.”

“Lie back,” he orders.

I do. I would do anything. He moves to stand above me, his legs parted on either side of my chest. He watches me with dark, brooding eyes. His cock dangles and the slit of his ass is before me, like a ripened fruit just out of reach. I palm my cock, unable to help myself.

“Khem, sweet Khem,” I gasp. He watches me impassively, curiously, interestedly. “Khem.”

I touch myself faster, my eyes locked onto the plush swells of his cheeks, the slit between them, so inviting. How I yearn to be buried there and never emerge, to plunge my cock into that sweet crevice forever, to know what it looks like spent with my seed.

I grunt, my hands moving faster, and my hips with them. I no longer care what it looks like, how rabid and base I must look. But I know he likes it, I know it. His pupils have blown wide and his breaths has become fast, shallow. His strong legs, the skin so smooth beside my head, begin to tremble.

And then, and then, his face clouds with fear, with guilt and with separation, and he falls to his knees abruptly, bringing his sweet center to the wet flesh of my cock. I cry aloud, and there is nothing to be done but lie there in wait and in hallowed grunt, as he hurriedly takes my cock in hand and sits on it with a deep cry.

My head hits the floor, my eyes see darkness. I feel enveloped in heat, in the flames of the place people are afraid of, but a holy flame, like a martyr’s immolation, something worthy of sainthood. I open my eyes to find Khem’s body bowed open, his muscles bunched and his knees spread wide, my cock a stiff shaft inside him. His face is twisted in ecstasy, in beautiful surrender. His head tips back, baring his long neck.

“My love,” I beg, in a chant or a prayer. “My love, my love…”

He fucks himself on me, like he had been born to do it. His whole body rolls in waves, eyes closed, massaging my cock, almost letting me slip out, before he takes me in deep again. And suddenly I am reminded of why he is the best dancer in the congregation, why everybody always stops to watch him, even the men, especially the men, and how no one moves like he does, no one, and God, how I had loved him from the first moment I saw him, me and everyone else, but Heaven as my witness I knew I was his and he was mine…

I cannot, I cannot last. I open my eyes and I grab him by the hips and I start fucking him hard, his moans catching in shock. I watch my cock plunge into his sweetness with the vulgarity of a brute, making sounds no two men should make. He cries so sweetly, his rosy nipples peaked, a thin sheen of sweat slickens his golden chest, and the column of his neck so kissable.

I can’t help it, I can’t help trying to fuck him harder, so that I may see myself in the bulge of his belly. I want to reach the place where no man has gone before. He screams my name, he wails in want, he cries with tears that join his sweat. I set my teeth and my nostrils wide and I set my cock to roost in him.

Until finally I burst. It careens out of me in a red hulking wave. I groan in unimaginable shock and pleasure and pain, and his beautiful body seizes, jerking, and finally he spurts up onto himself, joining the rippling waves of his abdomen.

I refuse to remove myself from him. My fingers grip the base of my cock to gather all the leakage and I stuff it back into him, though it spills out torrentially. He cries immediately at the extra intrusion, his face red and tear-stricken. I keep stuffing him full until he is rocking slowly, backward and forward, on my soft cock and my fingers.

“Khem,” I breathe, entranced. “Khem, I have loved you since first I saw you. My Khem, you were magnificent, beautiful, like a phoenix. I wanted you to run away with me.”

“Run away with you?”

“Yes.” My cock has hardened again and Khem begins to squirm. I pull out suddenly and flip him onto his stomach and plunge in deep again. He wails and claws at the floorboards as I fuck him deeply, ruthlessly, relentlessly.

“Yes,” I keep seething. “Yes, run away with me.”

“I cannot,” he cries, twisting his waist to spread his cheeks wide with his hands, wide enough for me to see every bit of my flesh entering him. “I am no one.”

“You are not no one.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“Chat, you are—oh,” he moans at a particularly sharp thrust. “—you are the Prince.”

“And as the prince, I will take what I want,” I growl, my hips meeting the buoyant flesh. “I will have you, Khem, until the rest of my days. Will you have me?”

“I—oh, oh, oh. But, I—”

“Say it. Say you will have me.”

I plant my hands on either side of his head and thrust my hips too fast for him to speak. His ass sucks me in without mercy, I have to press my head to the back of his neck, driving myself down until I am fathoms deep, as if by will alone I may impregnate him, engorge him with my endless want.

He makes a guttural yell, then. His fingers loosen on his cheeks. “Yes!” he screams, as I finish him. “Yes, Chat! Yes!”

I finish myself in three final, brutal strokes and his tightness milks me dry. I collapse onto his back, still buried to the hilt. I mourn the moment I will have to extricate.

“Oh,” he breathes below me, utterly spent.

“You have promised me now,” I whisper, my lips on his neck. I hug him to me, uncaring of the liquid that leaks out from where we are still joined. “You have promised not to leave me.”

“Yes,” he whispers. “Chatra.”

I feel the heaviness of tears behind my eyes. I let them fall onto his heated skin. I keep him close, always. I have already made a decision.

“I do not care about my title,” I cry, “I do not care about the mission. I only want you. I want you to be mine in spirit, in body, as well as in name.”

I feel Khem still beneath me. He is so warm, so fitting in my arms. His chin turns so that his full lips brush my cheek. “Chat? What do you mean?”

I look down at him, at his flushed face, his soft lips. I take those lips in mine. I lick into him and taste his sweetness. He moans a little.

“Marry me,” I say into him, getting lost in his kiss. “Marry me, Khem.”

“What?” he breathes. “Now?”

“Yes, now. We will leave tonight, go somewhere far away where no one will find us and no one knows us. We can get the first priest we find and marry in a chapel, with white cloth over our hands, and we will say our vows and exchange rings and then I will take you to bed, properly. And I will wake upon you in the morning and I will kiss you last in the evening. And we will not have to answer to anyone, Khem, no one at all but our own whims, no one will ever look down on us, and we can finally live.”

He pulls back and looks at me with those dark, questioning eyes. “You’re really serious?”

My cock slips out of him. We both grunt in surprise.

He looks up at me with wide, wet eyes, too warm for this place that has only ever hurt him, used him. He has nothing keeping him here, just as I have nothing keeping me to the crown.

“You can teach the children dance,” I whisper. “Or on the weekends, you could dance in the local theatre. I will get an honest job, or as honest as I know how to be. We will be happy, Khem, and free.”

His fingers go to my shoulders, digging in. He looks at my chest, deep in thought. Then, his eyes flicker back up to mine, and he says:

“Okay.”

I blink. “Okay?”

“Yes,” he says. “I will marry you, Chat. I will stay by your side, until the day I am taken from you.”

I take him in my arms and kiss him with everything I have, until breath means nothing to us anymore. We roll across the floor and laugh into each other’s mouths like children. With him below me, I press my love into his laughing mouth and I swallow his tears when I press my cock into him again, like a well-fitting glove.

A moan punches out of him, and I place my hands on his face and stare into his eyes with each roll of my hips. His thighs have fallen open wide, so flexible, his entire body spread open for me. My eyes fog with gratitude and I bite it into his neck, the strong tendon there, salty from sweat and tears. I feel as if someone has lit my backbone on fire, and each push into Khem’s body is the search of the lost and greedy.

Our lovemaking grows clumsy, uncoordinated, our breaths growing harsher, heads pressed together. Moans drop from his lips as his spread thighs stiffen. “Oh,” he keeps saying, eyes impossibly wide, split entirely open, “Oh, Chat—”

“I love you,” I breathe into his mouth, eyes falling closed, as my thrusts get rougher, more violent. “God, I love you, Khem.”

“I love—” His voice cuts off with a mangled cry. “I love—”

I come right into the heat of his body again, all at once, my entire back going rigid, his legs digging into my sides. I gasp out a curse, a penitence, as if someone had punched me in the gut. I imagine all my seed coating his insides and I shudder with so much pleasure that I exhaustedly move my hips in tiny jerks, to further make him memorise the shape of me that carved him out.

He has fallen asleep, unresponsive. His legs have fallen open wide. I grip the base of my cock and pull out slowly, watching as inch by inch, white liquid leaks out of him. I massage the cock-head back in a few times, to push it back in and smear it, and Khem makes a desperate sound in his sleep, not unlike a dying man’s desperate cry for water.

In the morning, I wake to find my arms empty. I sit up on the small bed, the sheets a tangle, and cold. I look around, but Khem is gone. They tell me he left during the night, that he’d taken everything of any value to him, including the small cat that always lingered around here, that liked him the most, that he’d named ‘Cham.’ I never saw him again, but sometimes as I lay with my wife I’d picture his face, tipped back in a laugh, and the graceful power of his body that had so enchanted the kings and courtesans of Siam. Years pass and I forget him, bit by bit, as one forgets so many things in old age. On the last day of my life, I see again that face behind my eyes, twirling in a forest of emerald silk and rosemary, and I think, Oh, how beautiful he was. How I loved him so.

I close my eyes and smile. 

With my final breath, I breathe his name.