Polo is one of the oldest team sports in recorded history!

The first recorded game of polo was 600 BC between the Turkomans and the Persians; the Persians won.

Polo sources claim that horse polo is the ancestor of both golf and (all forms of) hockey, as its recorded history is older than those - and rather than being innovative, they are simply what happens when you remove the horsies. Golf and hockey sources do not acknowledge this. Horseless behavior.

Polo horses are correctly called “polo ponies” but they’re mostly technically horses. This is a horse person linguistic nonsense thing.

The field for playing polo is the largest of all field sports.

Calvary-type nations around Europe, Asia and the Middle East would play polo as a training exercise. The demise of cavalry units in warfare made polo less interesting.

The idea of “polo originating using the severed heads of enemies” is possibly apocryphal, since balls are fairly old technology and a ball is literally just better for sports.

I love how there are a lot of Chinese representations of female polo players, they’re sooo expressive 😭 yes girls!!! It IS like that!!! female Tang Dynasty polo players, source 1 and source 2

Since I know you nerds will ask

according to Tolkien, the hobbit Bandobras Took, who stood 4’5” and could ride a horse, was credited with “inventing the game of golf” after charging goblin ranks and using a club to whack the head off the leader.

Given the visuals and pragmatic realities, etc, he was probably mounted on a horse and struck downwards. Think about it.

so yes, what he probably actually invented was polo.

But you’d have to remove the horses anyway, if nobody else in the area could manage one, which instantly results in golf or hockey.

ANYWAY

A very pretty sport, although I don’t follow it myself. Currently practiced in its “modern” form mostly in Argentina I think?

Only REALLY obscenely wealthy, posh British people play it in the UK, which Charlie isn’t, so you can have fun Inventing a Convoluted Premise

Maybe that’s the Pretense. Charlie can’t actually play polo and is actually a massive imposter, pretending to be a 6-foot Tory English baron, and everyone knows he fucking well isn’t, but he’s doing it anyway

I don’t know why but I agree wholeheartedly with your subconscious that Charlie is running around doing MOUNTED WARFARE while Killie is stressing to death in the tea tent.

another messy slather of scarlet along his shaft and then he’s ramming his cock into you in one sharp, quick, hard thrust, the vicious motion jostling your limp body up the mattress. 

it isn’t as fun when you’re not crying and squirming beneath him, nails sinking into his shoulders and tearing (a futile effort, but it’s cute that you try), limbs writhing in opposition as you try to shove at his shoulders or kick at his hips (so precious that you think you’d ever be strong enough to achieve such a feat). 

it isn’t as fun when your sobs of protest don’t turn into squeals of pleasure, when your struggling doesn’t turn into clinging, suddenly desperate as your legs knot around his waist and your pelvis rolls up to meet his own, begging him with sugary sweet gasps of nii-chan, nii-chan, nii-chan!—but he’ll take what he can get. 

because even in the absence of all of his favourite things, he still cums quite quick, the scent of your blood and the feeling of it on his skin—silk and slime—an intoxicating mixture, strokes of carmine smeared across toned muscle and pale linen.

it’s almost artful in a way, how he paints your body in your combined fluids, red and white, pearl and crimson, swirling together to create an iridescent pink. 

your favourite colour, isn’t it? he thinks it might be on the verge of becoming his favourite colour, too. 

a wheeze scrapes at your throat, a thick pool of saliva gurgling on the back of your tongue and he’s drawn back to the present moment, your wounds still gently weeping. 

christ, he nearly whines to himself, fingers twitching, itching to touch. you look so goddamn pretty covered in your own blood, engraved with molds of your big brother’s mouth—replicas of all thirty-two teeth stamped thoughtfully into shoulders and wrists and thighs, stained a deep, grotesque purple—and glazed with your big brother’s cream, splattered in masterful streaks across soft skin. 

pretty and perfect and all for him, made by him, just for him.

when you finally wake, half-delirious and head stuffed with fog, you wake to your big brother studiously tending to your wounds, deft fingers conscientious as they work—yet there is a certain carelessness to it, too; an ease, an expertise, the type that develops with extensive experience.

he’s done this before. 

patches of white litter your skin, taped tightly over the sketches of his mouth. a hiss slips from between clenched teeth as you push yourself onto your elbows, blood blooming through cotton. 

“be careful,” your older brother chides, not looking up from his task, nostrils twitching slightly. “you’ll tear open your wounds again; they were just beginning to clot.” 

whining a little, your brow crumples in sleep-tinged confusion, lifting your heavy limbs experimentally, coating of dried cum cracking with the motion. some bites are deeper than others, some so painful it hurts to move the muscle they’ve been carved into at all, soft fingers prodding delicately around the puffy gauze, procuring a sharp gasp from your mouth, face puckering with pain.

“it’s good you’re awake,” he says, nonchalant as he presses another bandage over a wound on your ankle—fresh, still exuding dribbles of crimson. glancing up through a curtain of hair, his stare finds yours, crystal and bright. “i thought you might never wake up.”