"Men and Their Wives" by Panda - Dilios/OFC - PG16
She slowly cleaned the dried blood away, careful not to press hard, and when all that was left was the raw, clotted wound she leaned up, pulling him into her embrace, and pressed her lips to both eyes in turn, lingering over his injured one, and then pressed a hard, needy kiss to his lips as tears made silent tracks down her cheeks.
The female protoganist had the forthright quality that Spartan were, indeed, known for, but she didn't leak into Mary Sue territory. (Bless you for that, my child.)
More importantly, you didn't make Dilios into some cliche-speaking wimp. One fanfic writer at some other site had him declare to his Mary Sue, "I can't live without you!" Which was a line so unoriginal that the writer should have just insisted that the invention of the wheel was her idea. And would a "With your shield or on it" kinda guy really say something like that?
But enough about that other piece. I liked this little offering enough to want to scratch your eyes out because, dammit! I want Dilios! And we can't both have him.
(Though I am kind of working on a little idea in which Dilios becomes the temporary property of an Amazon who shares a household with her "Beloved". The Beloved One is a fairly committed lesbian who can occassionally enjoy being with a man who is very tender and attentive for the sake of getting a child, while the Amazon who challenges Dilios is a essentially straight woman who ADORES her gentle, elegant Beloved, but sometimes wants it rougher than her gentle partner can handle. (And then there is the whole penis bit.) The custom among the Amazons when two women share a household as "Beloveds" to choose one man to father a child on both of them, so that their children are half sibilings.
The exploritory point is that Dilios finds being with the Amazon every bit as wild and freeing as being with another man (Which, let's face it, the Spartans DID.) with the added plus of having a woman's body (Which my Dilios-take prefers, 'cause while I can handle him being somewhat bi- it breaks my heart to think of him as being completely gay!)
His struggle is that after enjoying "a challenge brawl on the bed" with the straight Amazon, he finds himself wanting a little post-coital kindness, but wakes up to find that she has left him to go cuddle and slumber next to her Beloved.
The irony is that they both have the same problem: they are both so caught up in the "only the strong and hard/warrior ethic" that the only person with whom they can each let down their guard is a woman.
He flounders with being jealous of the Beloved who gets to experience the gentle side of the Amazon, and conversely becomes even closer friends with the Amazon because they both are enchanted with the gracious, exquisite Beloved.
Meanwhile his Spartan buddies are NO help at all because they just think that he's a lucky dog because he gets to have sex with two women.)
Sheesh! Enough about that! Back to you. Loved the Queen/Goddess verbal twist. It needs to be made stronger by blending the text closer. "Gorgo is your Queen, [beat] I am your Goddess."
Great stuff.
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