Winged Eros
Title: Winged Eros
Author: septemberoses
Fandom: True Blood
Rating: R for smut, fluff, and dirty vampire talking
Pairing: Eric/Godric
Word Count: 2100
Note: What would Valentine's Day be without a fic about our favorite Viking and his pint-sized maker?
Thanks to blissy83 for the awesome graphic!!!
"Eric, listen - it's the coyotes again." They were yipping in the snow-covered hills not far off.
"They've caught something. Probably one of those nasty rabbits." The jackrabbits here were all ears and not much meat. They'd both seen the coyotes on their walk late the night before, lean and rangy, hunting. They'd faced each other, the dogs' yellow eyes glowing in the dark before they'd turned tail and slunk off, nothing like the wolves Eric remembered.
"I like that sound," Eric said. "It makes me hungry."
Godric sighed. It sounded both happy and sad.
"Do we have to go yet?"
"Not quite yet." They'd been in the hot tub for some time, Eric having bought it for the evening so they could be alone after their massage. The bathhouse was well known, Asian in style and nestled in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains above the town of Santa Fe, off the road that wound up through the forest to the ski basin. Eric had rolled his eyes at first at the idea of spending a long weekend in a town known for its New Age mysticism and political correctness, but even he could see its quirky charm - the bodegas, the narrow streets, and the crumbling, snow-covered adobes with the red-chile ristras tied in bundles to the porch beams. Godric had suggested it; it was a short trip for both of them. Now Eric couldn’t quite believe they hadn't been here before.
"What are you thinking about?" Godric asked as he leaned against Eric in the water, both of them relaxed. Their appetites, whetted by the chaste but nonetheless sensual massage from the handsome young men earlier, the two of them on tables side by side, were now well sated, at least for the time being.
"I'm thinking about getting you one of those lovely squash-blossom necklaces," Eric answered. It had become a joke between them, all that Native American handcrafted silver everywhere you looked. Godric had stared wide-eyed at the windows in shop after shop around the Plaza, as if at a horror movie.
"I'm not accepting any more gifts from you, Eric. Not after last Christmas."
Eric laughed. He'd gotten his money's worth out of the electrical stimulation kit, that was true. If he spent any time at all thinking of Godric, moaning in that bed with his hands tied to the posts, he'd be hard all over again.
"You liked it. You know you did. And your other gifts."
"Only you could make Boggle into something perverted." Eric had improved upon the rules that came in the game box.
"I'm resourceful."
"You are certainly that." Godric pulled one of Eric's arms across his chest. Eric inhaled deeply, smelling the sweet scent of Godric's hair, a smell he could never get enough of.
"What are you doing?"
"You know perfectly well what I'm doing." He sniffed again. The air carried the smell of snow and woodsmoke, sweet and resinous, from the pinon wood the locals burned in their kiva fireplaces. Mingled with the smell of Godric, it was even lovelier.
"What do you want to do later?" Godric sounded sleepy. They'd have to go soon. The place had quieted down, most of the skiers having left from the communal tub. Eric could hear the cars in the parking lot below, their tires crunching in the snow.
"We could go for a walk again. Look at the moon. I could show you the constellations." Eric looked up happily. The sky here was very clear and brilliant with stars, so different from where either of them lived.
"We could do that."
"Or, if you're tired, we could go back to the house." It was adobe, rustic and charming, not too far out of town, and let out to vampires who had requirements regarding light and security. "I could build a fire and tuck you in and tell you bedtime stories."
"Mmm. What sort of stories?"
"I'd tell you the story of Saint Valentine, patron saint of our nice weekend here." Eric nibbled gently on Godric's ear. "Have you heard the story of Saint Valentine, little boy?"
Godric laughed. "Yes, but you can tell me again."
"It's a very sweet and tender story of a priest, martyred by the Romans for spreading his Christian contagion among the peasantry." The Romans had been on to something, there. Too bad they hadn't been more successful.
"Yes? That's lovely. Go on."
"Well, they arrested him and put him in prison for performing Christian marriages and otherwise aiding the persecuted. And then they beat him with clubs and stoned him. And then," Eric continued, "when he was still alive, they dragged him to the Flaminian Gates and hacked his head off and stuck it up on a pike. And now we honor his sacrifice by gifts of chocolate and flowers and tawdry underwear, in the hopes of getting laid."
Godric smiled and pushed against him.
"It's so romantic, the way you tell it."
"I can fill in the more salacious details later. When we're in bed."
"I don't know … it depends. Did you get me some tawdry underwear?"
"The tawdriest. The edible ones looked disgusting, so I got you something nice in a red acetate with plastic lacings on the side. I think I can chew through them in no time."
"Well, I'm speechless. No flowers? No candy?"
"I bet I'm going to get laid without them."
"I expect you're right." Eric felt his arm nudged southward then and his hand carefully placed where it would do his maker the most good. He smiled. Godric would go on talking and pretend nothing was happening for as long as he could manage. Eric began to stroke him in long, slow movements.
"I heard there was a hot springs nearby. Did you know that?"
"I did," Eric answered. "I went there the first night we arrived, while you were on the Plaza, brushing up on your haggling skills."
"Oh? You didn't mention it."
"Well, I knew we were coming here, and I thought we might want to go there as well."
"And how was it?"
"It was …" Eric shifted his grip and was rewarded with a small, sharp sigh. "It was a small hole beside the road, full of long-haired, dirty hippies and their spawn, peeing in the water. Do you want to go?"
Godric shuddered delicately. "Stop, you're going to give me nightmares. That's worse than your Saint Valentine story. It's worse than the email you sent me about that place in the Poconos you were threatening me with."
"The one with the heart-shaped tub?"
"And that great, tall champagne-glass plastic thing you can climb into. And the round satin king-sized bed with the bedbugs."
"I don't remember them mentioning the bedbugs in their brochure," Eric mused.
"It's an extra, along with the unwashed bedspread and the well-stained mattress."
"The bedbugs would love you, all soft and pale and warm." Godric had caught his breath once or twice; he couldn't hold out much longer.
"If I'm having my blood sucked it won't be by those hideous things, thank you very much."
"It would be a terrible waste of your blood, I agree. Anyhow, I know someone who'd do it for you."
"You do?"
"Yes." Eric stroked him a few more times and then let him go. Godric turned his head and looked up at Eric, reproachful.
"Sorry. You'll have to wait. I'm going to drag you back to my lair and ravish you properly."
"But I don't want to wait."
"It's time you learned some self-control when it comes to sex," Eric said cheerfully, feeding Godric back the words that had been directed at Eric since their beginning. "Besides, you have to open your present."
"I saw the box sitting there. What's in it? A blindfold? A riding crop?"
"In your dreams." It was a small bronze statue of winged Eros, very old and very fine, no doubt stolen from Greece centuries ago. It probably belonged in a museum. Eric thought it would look nice on the chest in Godric's bedroom.
"I have something for you too, you know."
"Do you? How sweet. If you're a good boy I'll let you up off your knees long enough to give it to me."
"Oh, is that how you suppose it's going to be?"
"Well, some of it."
"You sound very sure of yourself."
"I speak from experience."
Godric snorted. It was time to go. Eric could feel his own self-control fading rapidly. If they lingered too much longer they'd be at it again, and one of them would wind up face-down on the cold cedar planking. The waiting, in its own way, was delicious.
"Come on." Eric tugged Godric to his feet and kissed him. "Let's go rinse off. I'll soap your back."
"I don't want my back soaped," Godric muttered, reaching for the towel.
"If you put on that cute little Japanese robe for me I'll soap something else, but you'll have to be quiet about it, this isn't that kind of place."
Godric slipped on the kimono and tied it. With his short hair sticking up it might have looked ridiculous, but as usual it didn't. Eric bit his lip softly. The wonderful thing about putting clothes on Godric was that you got to pull them off again. Or simply reach up underneath, as he was tempted to do now.
"And the slippers," Eric added. Godric's feet were so small he'd wound up grabbing a pair of rubber thong sandals from the women's bin.
"They're ice-cold," Godric said, holding them up. "Dunk them in the water, if you want me to wear the silly things, and put them on me."
Eric, still in the hot tub, did so, glancing up at Godric standing there on the side with his arms wrapped around himself, looking very small. After a minute Godric extended one foot forward in a graceful movement.
Eric took it in his hands and was surprised to find it was cold already. He wrapped his large, warm hands around it as Godric stood still on one foot, no difficulty for someone as old as he was, with a vampire's acute sense of balance.
Eric, of course, meant to slip the sandal on … but he couldn't do so without first raising that beautiful foot a little higher and kissing the top of it. And then the big toe, and the one next to it. He turned his head and laid his mouth against the high arch of the instep, touching it with his tongue.
Eric had long worshipped Godric's feet. His interest in their earliest days had been kindled by the fact that his strange, unfamiliar, and often-terrifying maker very much didn't want his feet touched, by anyone, including Eric. Eric didn't know why until later. But the idea that it was off-limits made it alluring to Eric, like everything else. He'd mounted a stealthy, strategic campaign in that direction that took several years to succeed. The end result was a mutually beneficial arrangement; Eric adored Godric's feet and enjoyed them in various ways, and Godric grew to enjoy it himself. Even now, the act of sitting on the sofa in front of the television, Godric stretched out at the other end with his eyes closed and his bare feet in Eric's lap where Eric could stroke them, was a source of enormous pleasure. Eric knew how much trust went into that simple gesture, and at what cost.
He glanced up at Godric, standing there, still balanced like a statue on one strong leg. Godric was smiling, knowing he'd won. You sneaky little devil, Eric thought. He only had one hand free, and he very much wanted to reach it down into the steaming water, but instead he warmed it and reached up under Godric's robe until he found what he was after. Godric gasped but didn't flinch at all.
"All right," Eric growled, "but you're going to have to stand there on one foot to have it." And before he bent his head back down to return his attentions to nuzzling Godric's instep, he saw his maker, smiling blissfully, raise his face to the stars.
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