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A hard surface against his side, against his arm, his face. A cold floor, perhaps slate or tile, he couldn’t tell. Had he been captured? No, that wasn’t right. His head was pounding a vicious, sickening throb at him. It was a feeling he recognised.
Had he been drinking?
Gwyn groaned, rolled onto his back, forced his breathing to calm at the vertigo that found him at the movement. Even at Court status he drank so much in a single sitting, that his hangovers were merciless, especially when he paired it with the sorts of things he offered freely up to his soldiers.
It had been one of those nights. He vaguely remembered they’d lost a campaign. Ten good fae, dead, and three of them with children. In the end he’d had to call a retreat and the fact of that was shameful. His core energy, his heartsong was triumph, and retreating in the face of danger made him sick with a revulsion that stuck to him like tar and glue. He’d found his way to the ale and cheap spirits – as the others mournfully had – and then drifted off into a forest, drinking so much that he’d made his way back to camp hours later, offering his soldiers a distraction they had not turned their noses at.
That would explain why he was sore, at least. But he wasn’t as sore as he expected to be, and after a few seconds he pushed himself upright, blinking around him.
He was in a tiled room, empty of all furniture except a bench. There was a chamberpot in the corner marked with a pattern of waves that had dolphins leaping joyfully from them. But Gwyn wasn’t tied or chained, he still had all his clothing, he didn’t feel like he’d been beaten or rough-handled beyond what his own soldiers had done to him.
Gwyn squinted, confused, pushed himself upright and walked over to a door that was so heavily weathered he couldn’t tell what kind of wood it was anymore. He banged on it, groaning as the sound split into his own skull. His feet were cold on the blue slate floor. Barefoot. Gwyn shook his head, dazed, someone had taken his shoes off. Someone had jerked at his pants and pulled them down around his ankles. The fact that he was clothed meant that someone had...dressed him? Seen him in disarray? He couldn’t remember.
He groaned at the shame that oozed through him. His usual pattern was to refuse to think about those nights, but he had to, for if he was captured by an enemy he’d need to have his wits about him. He hoped his soldiers were alright. The blow of losing comrades was one they had all weathered, but to have to retreat as well – Gwyn was famous for being unbeaten. They had grown used to the luxury of winning.
Retreat...how very like you to have not have been more prepared.
Gwyn banged on the door again. His wrist froze mid-knock when it opened and Albion – demigod of the Atlantic sea – looked at him coldly. The severe cut of his navy blue suit, the sharpness of his pointed beard and moustache, didn’t help Gwyn feel reassured.
Albion pushed past him and slammed the door shut as Gwyn backed up, staring at the Navy General who answered only to the Oak King, the SeelieKing of all Seelie fae. They weren’t anywhere near the ocean, what had happened?
‘Albion, what is the meaning of this?’
‘I would ask you the same question, ap Nudd. I was nearby in the area, called upon to deal with a Navy matter, when I heard that the famous, up-and-coming Gwyn ap Nudd had been forced into retreat. I came to lend my support. Imagine my surprise to find you bare-assed before your own men, let alone so drunk that you clearly remember none of it.’
Gwyn refused to put his back to the wall, but in the small room with the four walls around them, he was trapped. Horror thundered through him. Albion was one of the most respected fae in the fae world, and even moreso amongst the military. He’d famously allied himself with Gwyn’s own father – Lludd Llaw Eraint – to take down one of the most aggressive factions of Unseelie fae known in a century.
His word was one Seelie and Unseelie alike hung upon. As an underwater King, he managed giant populations of Seelie and Unseelie both.
He’d seen Gwyn...like that.
Gwyn swallowed, maintained eye contact. It was surprisingly easy. Years of staring down his father’s disapproval when his heartsong had become triumph.
‘Your Majesty, my comrades and I were retired for the night, and therefore what any of us did is entirely our own business.’
‘Until they broadcast to the entire Seelie Court that one of the most famous noble family’s firstborn son is a drunken slattern. Apparently not even intelligent enough to ask for money in exchange for his services?’ Albion said, his voice devoid of feeling.
Albion had always been stern, but he’d still managed to treat Gwyn with respect. Now Gwyn could see the disgust in the way he held his body, the way he looked Gwyn up and down as though he was worth nothing. Gwyn resisted the urge to apologise.
‘They are honourable men,’ Gwyn said finally. ‘And it remains none of your business, with all due respect, Your Majesty.’
‘Don’t talk to me of respect,’ Albion said, stalking forwards and pushing Gwyn up against the wall with a single finger jabbing into his chest. His nails were blunt, but the pressure made them feel sharp against his skin. Gwyn grit his teeth, made to move away despite the way it made his head pound to do so, but Albion blocked him. Gwyn may have been Court status, but Albion was stronger than him, had the advantage of age, power, experience. Gwyn glared.
‘If you wish to broadcast the behaviour to the Oak King, then I am sure you will. However, I-’
‘You are shamed by it, I can tell,’ Albion hissed. ‘Do you know how I can tell? Because when you saw me, only five hours ago, you begged me for understanding and mercy. You. Begged. Me.’
Gwyn’s face went blank, a mask hiding his shock. He didn’t remember that either.
‘You also begged me to hurt you,’ Albion said, his voice grim. ‘None of this you recall, do you? What a fool you are. Perhaps if you spent more of your evenings reviewing strategy instead of spreading your legs for cock, you wouldn’t have needed to retreat in the first place.’
Gwyn shoved at Albion hard, and even though Albion didn’t move, Gwyn bared his teeth and glared at him.
‘I’ll have you know that-’
‘I am a King,’ Albion hissed. ‘I have no time for this. I have only deigned to give you somewhere to get over your hideous, wretched display because you are Lludd’s son. What would he say?’
Gwyn baulked, swallowed hard.
‘You have no reason to tell him,’ he said.
‘Because he would punish you?’ Albion said, raising manicured eyebrows. ‘Someone should, don’t you think? Do you wonder if there is a line of shame that even you are unwilling to cross? Well?’
Albion’s hand came up and gripped Gwyn’s jaw roughly. The whole room – Gwyn tried desperately not to think of it as a cell – smelled of salt now, and there was a storm in Albion’s dark blue eyes. His breath smelled of saltwater. Gwyn looked away, unable to stand that roiling storm in Albion’s eyes. There weren’t many fae out there like Albion, and some argued that he was old enough now he was beginning to transition into a true god and would one day make his way to the upperworlds or underworlds to live out the rest of his life. He had presence.
‘Why do you do it?’ Albion said, stepping closer until their bodies were nearly touching. ‘Beg them to hurt you?’
‘Everyone knows I hurt them in turn,’ Gwyn said, keeping his voice as cold and empty as possible. It was difficult knowing that he’d begged Albion to hurt him. Albion. Why did it have to be him?
‘Yes, that much is true. Gwyn ap Nudd, the one who uses his sword against the enemy and his cock against his comrades. Has a ring to it, doesn’t it?’
Gwyn cringed.
‘How would you feel if we all behaved as you did? If we all took liberties with reputation and honour as you did? What if Albion, King of the Atlantic, told you to get on your knees. Would you do it? What if I commanded you to?’
A cold chill went through Gwyn’s body, and he tried to jerk his head out of Albion’s grip. Albion’s fingers clenched, his other hand came up to Gwyn’s shoulder and then pushed down with a sharp, forceful pressure that Gwyn had to pit himself against to stay upright. He looked at Albion in horror, tried to laugh as though he saw the joke. But Albion wasn’t laughing.
Albion looked as though he had never been more serious.
‘Albion,’ Gwyn said, wrists coming up and digging into Albion’s, trying to force his grip away.
‘I am stronger than you,’ Albion said, blinking in a slow, lazy manner. ‘Much.’
‘This is foolishness,’ Gwyn said, and Albion looked at Gwyn with disdain.
‘I know. Perhaps maybe you’ll think of that yourself the next time you decide to do any of it.’
‘I will, honestly,’ Gwyn said. ‘This has been a sobering experience I assure you. Albion, if you-’
The pressure on his shoulder became inexorable, and Gwyn’s knees buckled even as he tried to gather them back under himself again. Albion leaned forward and pushed harder, moving his hand from Gwyn’s aching jaw and tangling his cold fingers into Gwyn’s hair, twisting hard and using pain to keep Gwyn moving downwards until his knees met hard tile.
The hand stayed in his hair, forcing him to look up. Albion’s other hand came around and a thumb rested on his cheekbone, holding him still.
‘You told me last night that you could make it good, did you know that?’ Albion practically spat at him. ‘I have always thought that people do their best work sober.’
‘Albion, you don’t understand, I can’t, it’s not something I do when I’m not...’
His heart was beating hard in his chest, a nauseating, flickering swoop. His hands were fists by his side. His eyes slid to the door, his cheeks burning. Any moment Albion would let him up with a warning and Gwyn could go shamefaced back to his comrades.
‘You have more honour than this,’ Gwyn said, turning his eyes back to Albion, hoping that Albion would see the appeal to not do this. Not only because it was shameful, awful, but because there was a small part of Gwyn that was still dark and hungry enough to want what Albion was suggesting. And now that he was sober, he was revolted with himself to realise that was the case.
‘This doesn’t sully my honour,’ Albion said coldly, removing the thumb from Gwyn’s cheek and undoing his pants. Gwyn jerked hard and only succeeded forcing Albion’s fingers deeper into his shoulder. He was already bruised, he could tell. ‘Your desperation speaks volumes. You know what you do is wrong.’
‘Albion, I’ve always respected you, this is unnecessary and it is frankly crude,’ Gwyn said, trying to sound reasonable even as Albion took his half-hard cock out of his pants. He was long, narrow at the tip. Gwyn could smell a faint musk, salt. But then the smell of salt was everywhere in the room.
‘I am sea-fae,’ Albion said, squeezing the base of his own cock briefly before raising fingers to Gwyn’s lips. ‘As sophisticated as we can be, we appreciate the quickness of a crude lesson delivered well.’
Fingers pushed between his lips, his teeth, before Gwyn could snap his mouth shut properly. They slid over his tongue and then shoved roughly into the back of his throat. Gwyn choked, gagged, squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t be defeated like this, he couldn’t be. His core energy of triumph felt tenuous enough. He reached up with his hands and grabbed at Albion’s wrist even as he tried to twist out of the way. He put force into it, a choked sound of dissent making its way past Albion’s fingers.
For a minute, he thought he would get free. But Albion doubled his efforts and there was the faintest sound of waves crashing in the distance, before Albion’s strength increased and Gwyn’s scalp ached, his body hurt, his head pounded. He was forced back into place. Gwyn went limp, the fingers still in his now scratched throat. He stared up at Albion, furious.
‘How terrible you don’t have ale to wash the reality of this down,’ Albion said carelessly, looking bored as he spoke with an uninterested sarcasm that was worse than before. Albion seemed only to care for the honour of the Seelie Court. Gwyn could have been anyone at all. ‘You brought this on yourself, you stupid child.’
Fingers forced his lower jaw down and Gwyn tried to tilt his head back and away, didn’t succeed.
‘Now, two things,’ Albion said, as Gwyn breathed hard and looked again to the wooden door, cheeks so hot they felt like they were burning. ‘The first is that if you hurt me, or escape, or teleport away, I will promptly go to your father and tell him of the exploits of his firstborn son. Perhaps you’d rather deal with the wrath of Lludd, and more the fool you. The second is that you really must know what a picture you make. A soldier like you on his knees, mouth open. It’s disgusting and obscene. Truly.’
Gwyn couldn’t look at Albion after that. There was no connection between them here, no mercy. He kept his mouth open when Albion moved his fingers away, but still leaned backwards to get out of the way when he heard the sounds of fabric shifting, of Albion finding the position he wanted.
When the spongy, salty head of Albion’s cock pushed into his mouth, Gwyn shook his head in small, tiny jerks. He thought Albion would say something – that he would gloat, comment, something – but instead he only pushed deeper, stopping when he reached the back of Gwyn’s mouth. Gwyn could take more of Albion in, he knew that much. When he was drunk he only wanted to be used and forgotten. But now that he was sober...
Would it be worth trying, at all? Would it be worth trying to impress him? Even in this?
Gwyn shuddered, his hands clenched uselessly at his sides. Albion was standing before him and he was on his knees, humiliated, but he still wanted to know if there was a way that he could win something. Approval, anything that would make this not a resounding defeat. He breathed deeply through his nose and pressed his mouth forwards without Albion’s guidance, letting Albion’s cock move deeper, nostrils flaring as he fought the instinct to gag.
Albion grunted as Gwyn moved back and then forwards again, letting Albion sink deeper again. He swallowed, letting the pressure of his throat crush the head of Albion’s cock. Albion responded by fisting both of his hands in the hair by Gwyn’s ears and bucking his hips forward into the constriction of Gwyn’s throat, forcing pain and salt until his nose was pressed into Albion’s pelvis. Gwyn struggled, choked, his hands came up and dug into Albion’s upper thighs for a minute, two minutes, until Albion finally, finally withdrew.
Gwyn gasped for breath, coughed, eyes stinging. His own cock had given a hopeful twitch. When he looked up, Albion watched him, no expression on his face.
‘Why do this if you hate it so much?’ Gwyn said, his voice already roughened.
‘Open your mouth,’ Albion said in response, and Gwyn’s face twisted.
‘Why?’
‘Did you ask any of the soldiers last night why they did it?’ Albion said. ‘You were too drunk to care what their motives were. You’re a Seelie fae on the fast-track to the Oak King’s Inner Court, and you treat that like its worthless. Perhaps you might wish to know how insulting that is to those of us who worked hard to find our military favour and might, instead of relying on your father’s reputation.’
Gwyn stilled, offended. For a moment, he could hardly think, anger pulsing through him. The implication that he hadn’t worked to get to where he was, that was awful.
‘Open up,’ Albion snapped.
‘Fuck you, Albion,’ Gwyn said.
Albion’s eyebrows twitched up again, his lips quirked as though he’d been about to smirk, but the expression disappeared behind that fathomless cold once more.
But Gwyn remembered the threats, couldn’t stand to have his father find out, and he opened his mouth anyway, closing his eyes in what he told himself wasn’t despair. When Albion slid his cock between his lips again, he realised that he was defeated again. It didn’t matter how he framed it. This was blackmail, and it would always be between them now. In a month, a year, a century, centuries, he would look at Albion and know that Albion had done this to him.
That – he knew – was the point.
The fingers in his hair turned his scalp to pinpricks of pain, but that was nothing to the weight in his mouth dragging his concentration to the difficulty of breathing, the roughness of Albion shoving into his throat again, using his mouth. Gwyn kept his throat as relaxed as he could, but it tensed anyway as tears came to his eyes, as his cheeks flamed with the humiliation of knowing that he was getting hard, throat sore and inside of his cheeks grazed on his teeth as he tried to offer suction, move his tongue, anything to speed things up so that it might be over sooner.
The room was filled with the sounds of Albion moving in and out of his mouth, choked breaths, sharp, deep inhales that were snatched whenever possible, the odd strangled noise. Albion was silent above him. A sea that hid its truths behind a calm, cold surface. There was a piquant flavour of salt in his mouth, burning his throat, in the air around him.
One of his hands clenched at Albion’s thigh, the other dug into his own thigh, both grips tight. He thought he might be falling. Albion had come to help them. Instead, he’d seen what would have been more fitting on the altar of some fertility god or goddess.
The thoroughness with which Albion was determined to make Gwyn take his length infected him with a heat that turned his body to sparks. His cock was hard in the constraint of his pants, he ached low in his pelvis, in his balls. His lungs burnt, his throat was a mess. He moaned a sound of confusion, and Albion still didn’t respond. If it wasn’t for the hardness of Albion’s cock in his mouth, he would have thought he was completely uninterested.
There was so much callousness that Gwyn couldn’t keep the tears from spilling even as he felt he deserved the treatment.
Albion grasped Gwyn’s hair tighter, his hips bucked in hard spasms and Gwyn choked as Albion released down the back of his throat; a thin, salty liquid bathing the grazes and making everything sting. Gwyn moaned, helpless, tired, knees sore against the tiles.
Albion withdrew before he’d finished coming, and Gwyn kept his eyes closed as a pulse of release found its way across his tongue, and then the corner of his mouth. He raised a hand to his lips immediately to stop it from trickling down his chin, and Albion caught his wrist in a punishing grip.
‘No,’ Albion said, and Gwyn’s face twisted as Albion watched the small line of his own come make its way past Gwyn’s lips down to the bottom of his chin. Only then did he let go of Gwyn’s wrist and watch as Gwyn hurriedly tried to clean his lips, his chin, with the back of his hand. Gwyn was gasping, coughing, distracted by the wet, pure salt that made him feel like he was dried out. He needed fresh water. He could feel his hair in disarray. He was still hard.
Albion zipped his pants back up. Gwyn’s head bowed, turned to the side.
He cried out when the sole of a shoe nudged hard against his erection.
‘Go on,’ Albion said, voice crisp, unaffected. ‘Finish yourself.’
Gwyn shook his head. He couldn’t. Not in front of someone. Not like this. The very idea left him paralysed.
‘Very well,’ Albion said, nudging Gwyn again with his shoe and then dropping his foot. ‘I must go clean myself up. I trust I shall see you, appropriately in command of yourself, in ten minutes. I will deliver you back to your military.’
Gwyn raised the back of his hand to his mouth. Nodded once. His core energy, the triumph that sang through his blood, was badly shaken. He felt as though he might be ill. It wasn’t so much what had happened, so much as Albion’s reaction the entire way through. Gwyn could have salvaged something, if only he’d seemed to...enjoy it. Instead it had seemed mechanical, awful.
Albion walked away, opened the door.
‘Albion,’ Gwyn said, his voice wrecked. Albion paused, and Gwyn tried to look up at him but couldn’t meet his eyes. He wanted to apologise. He wanted to ask for mercy. He had the most absurd notion to ask Albion to come back and reassure him that things would still be respectful between them in the future. It was all folly.
‘What is it?’ Albion said, staccato.
‘No, nothing.’
The door slammed shut and Gwyn waited for as long as he thought it would take for Albion to walk away, before a wrecked cry fell from his mouth. He only allowed the one.
He took several deep breaths and forced himself upright on shaky legs, bracing himself against the wall.
Ten minutes, Albion had said. He could do that, he was sure. But he couldn’t do the rest of it. He couldn’t stop the occasional nights he got drunk when the despair yawned too big inside of him, he knew he couldn’t stop going to his own men and asking them to do whatever they liked, even if he regretted it later. Albion didn’t understand. It wasn’t about enjoyment. The more Gwyn loathed what he was, the more likely it was to happen.
But he’d have to avoid it. At least for some time. He shuddered out a sigh and wiped tears from his eyes, his cheeks. Cleared his throat. He wasn’t broken. He was sure he wasn’t broken. His core energy of triumph still held, even though it was shaken.
But when Gwyn reached the wooden door, he found he couldn’t open it. He pressed his forehead to it and his breathing slowly escalated into gasps beyond his control.
In the end, it took him far longer than ten minutes to master himself.