#telemann

The great hall of Ithaca was no longer a home. It was an abattoir, a freshly consecrated temple to the Fates and the bloody-minded justice of a long-absent king. The air was a thick, suffocating soup of copper, iron, sweat, and the sour stench of spilled wine mingling with voided bowels. It was the smell of an argument settled in the most final of terms. An hour ago, this hall had echoed with the boorish laughter of over a hundred men. Now, the only sounds were the groans of the dying and the grim, wet sounds of the loyal few finishing their work.

From your post by the main doors, you watched the carnage, your sword arm a leaden weight, your breath coming in shallow pants. A deep, ragged cut on your forearm wept a sluggish stream of your own blood, a stark contrast to the arterial spray that painted the walls and pillars. You were Y/N, daughter of Eurybates, the man who had been Odysseus’s most trusted herald, his shadow and his voice in foreign lands. He had sailed for Troy and never returned, his fate a question mark swallowed by the wine-dark sea. You, his only child, had been raised in the palace on stories of his loyalty, and you had sworn an oath over his tarnished shield to protect the house he had died serving.

When Odysseus had finally returned, a beggar in his own home, he had looked at you and seen not a girl playing guard, but the ghost of his friend in your eyes. He’d given you the honor of guarding the doors during the slaughter. And you had held them.

You had fought. You had killed. And you had watched Telemachus kill.

He was not a boy anymore. The change had been terrifying and magnificent to behold. You had felt it, the shift in the very air around him when the battle began. It wasn’t just mortal skill. Athena was here. You had felt her presence like a chilling wind, a sudden, unnatural clarity that guided the arrows, a divine weight behind every spear-thrust. You’d seen a suitor’s spear swerve at the last second, as if hitting an invisible shield before Telemachus. You’d felt that same cold fire in your own veins as you’d parried a desperate lunge, your own blade moving with a speed and certainty that was not entirely your own.

Now, the goddess’s presence was fading, leaving behind a profound, ringing silence and two generations of kings surveying their bloody work. Odysseus stood by the throne, a grim, terrifying figure of retribution. And beside him, splattered from head to toe in gore that was not his own, stood the new wolf of Ithaca, his son.

Telemachus’s eyes found yours across the hall of the dead. They were wide, the pupils blown huge in the torchlight, reflecting the carnage around him. They were haunted, yes, but they were also blazing with a terrifying, electric light. He looked like a man who had wrestled with a storm and somehow swallowed the lightning. He gave his father a curt, jerky nod, then started towards you, his boots squelching softly in the blood-slicked rushes. He moved with a new, dangerous grace, a predator in his own reclaimed territory.

He didn't speak when he reached you. The words were all dead, heaped on the floor around you. He took your arm, his grip hard, almost painful, and pulled you away from the slaughterhouse. He led you through the now-silent corridors, his steps urgent, his energy a frantic, vibrating aura that seemed to push you along. He all but threw you into his chambers, following you in and slamming the heavy oak bolt home.

The sound of the bolt was a thunderclap in the sudden, profound silence. The grim work downstairs was a world away. Here, there was only you, and him, and the ghosts you had just made.

He was trembling. A fine, high-frequency vibration that shook his entire body. He was thrumming with the residue of divine power, a mortal wire that had carried too much current. He looked down at his hands, at the blood caked under his nails and dried in cracks across his knuckles.

"Her hand was on my shoulder," he whispered, his voice hoarse, disbelieving. "The entire time. I felt her. A cold fire. The spear was not my own." He looked up at you, his wild eyes searching your face. "I killed them, Y/N. I looked them in the eye, and I felt nothing but cold purpose. And now…" He trailed off, his throat working. "Now I feel everything at once."

He surged forward, his body colliding with yours, his hands gripping your waist so tightly you thought you might break. He was shaking his head, burying his face in the crook of your neck, his breath coming in hot, frantic pants.

"I need to feel something else," he breathed, his voice ragged against your skin. "Anything but this. I need to get the cold out. I need to feel a mortal heart beating. Please. I need to feel your heart." He pulled back, his eyes a desperate, pleading storm. "I feel… feral. I don't want to hurt you. Tell me what you want. I'll do anything. Just ground me. Bring me back."

The rawness of his plea, the desperate need to feel human again after being a god’s weapon, resonated in your own soul. You were buzzing too, your own body alight with a fire that was equal parts terror and triumph. You reached up, your grimy hands cupping his face, forcing him to meet your gaze.

"I want you," you said, your voice a low, fierce growl that left no room for doubt. "And I don't want you to hold back. I want the storm. I want the lightning. I fought with you, and now I will bring you back. Show me how alive you are, Telemachus. I can take it."

A choked, desperate sound was torn from his throat, and his mouth crashed down on yours. It was a brutal, savage kiss that tasted of blood and iron and a desperate, shared need for life. It wasn't a kiss of seduction; it was a ritual of grounding. He was trying to push all the death he’d dealt out of his mind and replace it with the taste of you. You met him with equal ferocity, your nails scraping down his back, your bodies grinding together, armor and leather and filth be damned.

You broke apart, panting, and began tearing at each other’s clothes. It was a battle. Buckles were snapped, leather straps were ripped, and tunics were torn. You were both covered in sweat, grime, and the drying blood of other men, and it was the most potent aphrodisiac you had ever known.

He got you down to your last layer of linen and backed you up against the wall, his hands pinning yours above your head. "Is this okay?" he panted, his mouth moving to your neck, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin there. "Still with me?"

"I'm right here," you gasped, arching into him. "Always."

He ripped the last of your tunic away and let his eyes roam your body, a possessive, almost reverent gaze that seemed to worship every bruise and cut you’d earned. Then he knelt.

"Let me taste life," he growled, and he buried his face between your legs.

It was a desperate, almost violent act of worship. He ate you out like a starving man, his tongue a hot, wet, demanding thing. He lapped at your folds, sucked on your clit until you were screaming, his hands gripping your thighs, leaving bloody fingerprints on your skin. He was trying to erase the taste of death with the taste of you, and you let him. You gave yourself over to it, your orgasm ripping through you in a violent, shuddering wave that was more about release than pleasure.

He rose, his lips and chin slick with you, and lifted you, your legs wrapping around his waist. He was still hard, a thick, angry-looking pillar of flesh. He drove into you against the wall, a single, brutal thrust that felt like being impaled and saved all at once. You cried out, a raw sound that was swallowed by his mouth on yours.

He began to fuck you with a desperate, savage energy. It was a frantic, punishing rhythm, an attempt to generate enough human heat to banish the divine chill from his bones.

"Bite me," he gasped, his voice breaking. "Scratch me. I need to feel it. Prove you’re real."

You sank your teeth into the muscle of his shoulder, and he roared, a wild, animal sound of pain and pleasure. You raked your nails down his back, leaving four parallel trails of blood in their wake. He slammed into you harder, faster, a relentless, savage pounding. This wasn't just fucking; it was an exorcism. Each thrust was a defiant scream against the silence of the dead.

He pulled out, and you cried out in protest, but he only carried you to the bed, throwing you onto the furs and following you down, not missing a beat as he plunged back inside you. He flipped you onto your stomach, pulling your hips up, and fucked you from behind, his hands tangled in your hair, pulling your head back. The angle was deeper, more primal, hitting a spot deep inside you that made your vision white out.

"Stay with me," he panted, his lips ghosting over your ear, his voice a desperate plea. "Don't leave me. I can still hear them."

"I'm right here," you sobbed, the pleasure so intense it felt like you were being torn apart and remade. "I've got you, my prince. I've got you."

The end came in a brutal, blinding rush. He was chanting your name like a prayer, a mantra to ward off the ghosts. You could feel his release building, a frantic, coiling heat in the base of his spine. He screamed, a raw, broken sound of pure catharsis, as his orgasm ripped through him, his release flooding you in hot, powerful waves. Your own climax crashed over you at the same moment, a violent, convulsive tide that was less about pleasure and more about a desperate, final expulsion of all the terror and adrenaline of the day.

He collapsed, his body a dead weight on top of yours, and for the first time since the battle had begun, he was still. The feral energy, the divine fire, it was all gone. And in its place, the crushing weight of reality came rushing in.

He rolled off you, pulling you with him into his arms, and then he broke.

His body was wracked with deep, gut-wrenching sobs, the kind that tear a man apart from the inside out. He cried for the men he had killed, for the boy he had been that morning, for the terrifying, cold touch of the goddess on his soul. The wild warrior was gone, and all that was left was a young man who had seen and done too much, his face buried in the crook of your neck.

You held him. You stroked his hair. You whispered his name. You were his partner in violence, his partner in feral passion, and now, you were his partner in the devastating aftermath.

When his sobs finally quieted into shuddering breaths, you rose and dampened a cloth in a basin. You returned to the bed and began the real ritual. You gently washed the blood of other men from his skin, your touch slow and reverent. You cleaned the grime from his face, the tears from his cheeks. When you were done, he did the same for you, his hands trembling as he cleaned the cut on your arm, his touch infinitely tender.

He didn't speak of love or forever. The future was an unknown country. He just pulled you against his chest, holding you as if you were the only thing keeping the ghosts at bay.

"Tomorrow," you whispered into the quiet darkness, your voice practical, grounding, "we will purify the hall with sulfur and salt. We will make offerings to the gods and to the shades of the dead. There are rituals for this."

He held you tighter, his face buried in your hair. "And tonight?" he asked, his voice small.

"Tonight," you said, pressing a soft kiss to his temple, "is for the living."