Archive of Our Own

Ouroboros
by Mairead Triste

In the very last moment he ever saw Kronos alive, it was the memory of fur that returned to him. Even survival shifted aside for an unreal flash of perfect recall—harsh, suffocating animal darkness pressed over his face, the dry, tanned smell unable to obscure the odors of horse-sweat and man-sweat and desperate denial. Methos froze, his nostrils thick with the scent of an animal three thousand years dead...

And then the circle closed.

Bronze Age

The first time Kronos had held back, Methos was sure of that. The first time Kronos had simply wrestled him into submission wordlessly, silently; attacking with vicious efficiency until Methos stumbled under the pain. Once he was down Kronos raped him dry, only blood easing the way between them—blood, fitting, such as it was—the source of their bond. Methos screamed himself into unconsciousness and woke alone in his empty tent, buzzing with a strange certainty that Kronos was capable of worse things. There was horror here. He clung to it. He embraced it as the only thing that rendered tolerable the sickening electrified voluptuousness of surrender.

The second violation confirmed belief. Kronos killed him, disdaining the struggle. There were words when Methos revived, naked and tethered to the support post, his hands bound high. Words he could not remember.

There had never been many words between them—Kronos either burned with rage or iced with knowing mockery; amusing enough, for the most part, but not a strong enough call to pull Methos from his habitual post of silent observer. But now he'd answered Kronos; had shed the skin of indifference like he'd shed the skin of his back under Kronos' lash. He had answered, he had opened, and the words that had been spoken...

eloquent...had he been eloquent in his pain?

...were lost.

A shame, really—to have paid so much for something, only to have it evaporate in the feeble light of a guttering oil lamp when he opened his eyes afterwards. He looked over his shoulder, overtaxed tendons in his neck creaking so loudly they echoed in his head. Kronos' somnolent, satisfied eyes dizzied him, the flame of madness banked in momentary satiation.

"Was that enough?" Kronos' voice had never been so warm, so free of cool cruelty. It terrified him.

Methos closed his eyes and turned his face to the rough wood of the pole, splinters whispering into the flesh of his cheek. "No."

And so, again: but this time, Kronos' grunts of pleasure died away long before the act was finished. Methos' parched throat fissured with his shriek of completion as Kronos' blade and cock stroked through him with matched brutality, but Kronos was utterly silent, even while gushing hot within him. Methos collapsed in the grip of the binding around his wrists, shuddering with release, and tried to stop himself from inhaling the sharp, distressed scent of panic.

The tang of fear-sweat grew only worse through the long, quiet period that followed, while Methos swam in blunted agony and swayed from his wrists to keep his feet. He could feel Kronos kneeling behind him, defined only by a pair of gentle hands on his hips and that acid smell, and a bone-deep ache where his gaze warmed Methos' flesh. Methos stood passively under the scrutiny-a silent cabal of artifice that let him preserve his head while he pretended that he didn't know that Kronos was absorbed; mesmerized by the glistening crimson trails that crept slowly down his slick thighs.

The third time, restraints were no longer necessary. Methos lay down willingly, smiling vaguely at Kronos' derisive taunts and gleeful threats, wrists up and palms open. He held firm for the lash, for the blade—screams did not count as rebellion; he knew Kronos fed on his clamor like a leech on swollen flesh.

Methos reveled in the freedom of overwhelm, blissfully unfettered by the poisonous drag of his carefully calculated sanity while Kronos climbed between his flayed thighs and took him, grinning; a ruthless, pounding demon bent on his destruction, lapping the offering of blood that was proof of salvation.

The exquisite purity didn't last. The moment Methos felt Kronos falter within him the fear was back in a tangible pall. His eyes fluttered open in dismayed shock (no... not this... please). Yes, this—Kronos was gone; the man he relied on to feed his fire and provide refuge for his desolate spirit and beat him bloody had been subsumed. The man above him now was pale and shaken; a fury gutted by a horrific devotion that neither of them could afford.

"No," Methos whispered through bitten, ragged lips, "please...don't..."

He was still whimpering words of denial when Kronos settled the fur over his face, broad palm outlined in the raw pelt hard on his traitorous mouth. Methos shuddered in agony as cognitive awareness returned in a debilitating rush, a sickening flood of comprehension.

The circle opened; a predestined consequence in the face of this appalling susceptibility—Kronos' death was held off only by an unknown span of time, time that slipped away faster than Methos could gather the years. What bled between them now would not be acknowledged—it would destroy them silently, annihilate the distorted faith that allowed them to act as one—ruin their perfect covenant of monstrosity. Kronos covered his face to keep him from witnessing the weakness of passion, one impotent act of unfathomable madness practiced ineffectually to obscure another.

Methos clung to the present with renewed ferocity—Kronos would die for him someday, yes, but for now there was nothing of substance outside of this brutal enchantment, nothing that mattered other than this raging spirit that plunged unyielding into his surrendered body. For a long time there was only the subtle torture of Kronos' unseen moans and the irresistible imprint on his senses of the smell and feel of the beast, animal lust and animal death blended to the essence of seduction; but then the darkness coalesced into the wet, heavy pulse of flesh slapping flesh, and he came screaming Kronos' name incoherently as he bit deep into the fur-covered palm that muffled him.

He waited in musky darkness for the end of things, and was given only one cool sip of the night air before Kronos closed on his mouth, devouring. The first kiss, burned on his senses for effortless recall during the impending centuries of loneliness, was also, Methos knew somehow, the last, the only kiss. When it ended his lips stung, a bitter, compelling pain that he would have kept, if he could.

He kept his eyes closed. Cowardice, and greed to hold the memory untainted by watching Kronos let him go.

"I'm leaving you." Acceptance, or denial, or even death—whatever awaited, he was ready.

Kronos nodded faintly against his shoulder. Acceptance, then. Methos didn't want to think about the hot liquid traces that burned the skin of his neck.

"I'll find you, Methos, you know that." So certain. Methos' chest cramped with momentary pain, unable to remember when or why he had decided that Kronos was invulnerable.

It was flatly impossible to honor over eight hundred years of brotherhood with one silent embrace, but Methos tried anyway—it was the only chance he had. He stroked the slick, sweaty muscles of Kronos' powerful back, and did the best he could.

Bordeaux

There was no surprise at his betrayal in Kronos' maddened, battle-lit eyes— that had been a foregone conclusion—only some hellish acknowledgement that the time had indeed slipped away faster than either of them had planned. Their farewell was silent, as the strongest things between them had ever been, an unsounded statement of futility and beloved possession.

Methos made himself look away as he felt the circle close between them, a loop of experience that now led to a finite end and yet revolved forever; a serpentine orbit of grief that would serve as an eternal reminder of the inevitable.

And then he was, inevitably, alone.