When Eric woke from dreaming of a boy's soft breath of desire and the click of fangs belonging to no creature that possessed a beating heart, the first thing that registered in his awareness was that the pattern embroidered onto the pillow beside his cheek was unfamiliar. Then he noticed that the walls he was looking at were certainly not the inside walls of his tent—these new walls were far too solid—and that he couldn't hear the horses—

Eric bolted to his feet, nearly tripping over the blanket tangled around his legs—the blanket tangled around his legs, which he had pulled up over his naked body last night—

And smiled. He was home, after all.

He sat back down on his bed and began to leisurely unwind the blue-and-gold coverlet—its pattern was almost identical to that on Eric's pillow, although its colors were an exact match—from around his ankles. It had been wonderful to sleep naked again, to stretch his muscles on the bed without the restrictions of clothing to hamper them, to fantasize about the boy Godric's reactions to his body with more than a decent amount of privacy... He wondered if Godric slept naked—unlikely, considering how shy he had been about swimming the night before, and considering what he said he had gone through as a slave. But did creatures like Godric even sleep? Eric decided he would ask him about that when they met in the evening.

Feet successfully untangled, Eric stood and walked past his armor where it hung on a stand in a corner. He opened the door to his bedchamber—inlaid with geometric patterns in bronze and ivory that were instantly familiar—where two female slaves stood waiting. One of these women was the girl who had handed Floriana to him yesterday. Today, her hands were unfortunately empty of the child, instead holding a clay jug with a handle. Next to her stood an older woman with graying hair who Eric didn't recognize—except he did, not only because she seemed to resemble the younger woman a little, but also because he remembered her. "I didn't expect to see you again, Old Elpis."

The frown lines around Elpis's thin mouth deepened. "Will you be satisfied if I admit that if not for your mother and Ariston's cooking, I would have gladly left this house the day you were born?"

Eric chuckled and stepped to one side to allow the old woman and her armful of cleansing tools into the room. "Your pleasant conversational skills would have been a great source of entertainment on the road." He quirked an eyebrow at Floriana's caretaker—Anthousa, that was her name—as she followed her mother into the room; her gaze leapt away from his body as she blushed.

"Oh, for Venus's sake, girl, don't act like you haven't seen it all before," Elpis snapped as she laid a wooden bowl, a towel and a pair of small bronze tweezers out across the flat top of the wooden clothes chest situated at the foot of Eric's bed. Like the chest, the bed was footed with lion's paws; but, with its concave ends, the bed more closely resembled a dining couch than a rectangular storage area. "Are you blind to the statues of this city that depict so many men in all their glory? And I bet you weren't asleep when you fucked that serving boy that gave you my grandson."

Eric watched the girl's reaction in silence, feeling a smile tug at the corners of his mouth as she set the jug down on top of the chest with a thump, then lifted her chin and held Elpis's gaze. "His name is Aisopos. Master Ulfrik has already given us permission to marry."

"And if anyone else had given you that permission it would have been only because you'd birthed another pair of hands to serve them. If you weren't rolling around on the flour sacks in the kitchen with another boy just last night, maybe I wouldn't feel like I have to remind you of how generous the master and mistress are."

Eric wondered if it was possible that Old Elpis and her daughter had forgotten his presence in the room—this was, after all, a conversation he could quite easily repeat to his parents, and thereby have the girl punished. But perhaps that was what his childhood caretaker wished?

The girl's lower lip protruded as she jerked her head at Eric. "I've heard stories: he gets to lay with whoever he wants."

Eric felt his smile flicker: this whiny child was suddenly no longer appealing.

"He is Eric, not only the heir to this house but also a man, and men can do whatever they like! You, girl, would be ruined already if you weren't a slave! So help me to the peak of Olympus, I will beg the master and mistress to dismiss you if you do not begin to appreciate your position! But for now, you can leave this room!" The old woman's eyes, blazing as her tearful daughter fled the room, did not soften as she rounded on Eric. "What are you smirking at?"

"I am simply... recalling a few similar conversations from my younger days." Eric sat obediently on the bed at Old Elpis's familiar, jabbing gesture, then waited there while she left the room.

She soon returned with a different girl, also dark-haired but with smaller breasts, and began plucking out the sparse hairs that had appeared on his jaw and neck overnight with what he was certain was more force than was necessary. (But even his enjoyment of Old Elpis's snarky comments could not override his soldier's pride, and so he did not complain.) The girl poured water from the jug into the bowl and, dipping the towel into the clear liquid, knelt and began to wash his feet. Eric found himself disappointed that she didn't look up from her work once in awhile: her dark eyes were very pretty.

Godric's eyes were gray—a color Eric had rarely seen on his travels—and they had perhaps been even more beautiful. But this young woman would do for now. Eric smiled at the back of her head. "What's your name?"

The girl flinched at the inquiry, and although she continued in her work, she did not look up.

It was Old Elpis who answered for her. "Your parents named her Galene when they bought her last year. She's mute, although I doubt she'd complain as much as my daughter if she could talk."

Eric smirked. "That's almost a compliment, coming from you. Can she give fellatio?"

"I said she's mute, not that she didn't have a tongue." The woman harrumphed as she placed the tweezers on the chest and brushed imaginary hairs from her tunic. "The mistress needs to get you a personal slave; I'm too old to be serving more than one person in a day. Tidy up the room when he's done with you," she added to Galene as she walked out the door, shutting it behind her.

Eric cupped his hand under the young woman's chin, lifting her face, and her dark eyes met his. He smiled her, knowing the precise places in his face which could be rearranged to form an expression of seduction. "Do you find me handsome, Galene?"

The girl nodded, slowly returning his smile. She would have been trained to give such an answer, even if Eric had been unthinkably ugly, but there was sincerity in her gaze.

Of course there was. As he had told Godric the night before, everyone thought Eric was a god. "Will you consent to pleasing me?"

The girl nodded again, leaning forward to slip him into her mouth without hesitation.

Eric closed his eyes, his fingers constricting slightly on the edge of the mattress as a slow breath left his nostrils. As the girl's mouth moved on him, his mind recalled the way Godric's wet tunic had hung off his shoulders... The way the boy's small, cold hands fit nicely in his own... The look in those gray eyes as Godric ran his hands down Eric's slick chest... Eric wondered what it would be like to perform this favor on the boy... To taste him in another place besides that smooth neck and that beardless cheek... To run his hands over Godric's skin as the boy arched in pleasure... To hear his cries escalate as he reached his peak—

Barely a breath left Eric with his own release, but afterward his eyes opened with the realization that Godric was the first person he had ever considered pleasing while receiving only indirect pleasure for himself. In his fantasy, he hadn't cared that his own body wouldn't be receiving direct stimulation: his only concern had been for the boy.

The boy who drank the blood of humans to survive.

The boy who had sworn to be Eric's ally.

The boy who had reacted with open ecstasy to even the lightest kiss on the cheek from Eric.

Eric blinked and looked down at the girl, who had sat back and was now looking up at him with a smile, as though waiting for his next wishes.

He could not return her smile: she was no Godric. "Help me dress."

She took the beige tunic he had worn to dinner the night before from the clothes chest and slipped it over his head; he stood as his arms came through the sleeves. He brushed past her without a word when she had finished doing up his sandals.

Eric strode to the dining room without pause, not even deigning to acknowledge Elpis's raised eyebrows, expecting the chamber to be empty—

But Eric's parents and companions were already there, breakfasting on fruit and bread drizzled with honey.

The smile he gave them came easily. "I told you you'd be eating bread with honey soon enough," he told Gunnar.

His fair-haired brother-in-arms shrugged and swallowed. "Ariston's a good cook."

Grinning, Eric selected a fig and sat onto the remaining couch, not bothering to recline as he bit into the fruit. "So, are we demonstrating our abilities with the sword after we eat, then?"

Ulfrik nodded. "You'll be fighting me. I practiced a little with an old friend who came over after you left last night."

Eric's eyebrows shot up, but he said nothing: he had assumed Ulfrik would plan something like this.

Following the end of the meal, the four men retrieved their swords and went out into the courtyard behind the next-door shop. As Father weighed Eric's, Hrolf's and Gunnar swords in his hands, announcing his satisfaction with their craftsmanship, Mother had a chair brought out and positioned in the shade near the rear of the shop. Here Astrid sat with Floriana on her lap, propping the infant's back up in a sitting position against her mother's front, so that the child might look around.

"Be careful, all of you," Astrid said, smoothing Floriana's hair back from her forehead, although her eyes did not leave the men. "This isn't a gladiatorial arena. Your stakes are not your lives."

"Yes, madam."

"Yes, Mother." Eric gave his reply along with the rest of them. He felt a jolting sensation in the pit of his stomach at the tender expression with which his father gazed at his mother as he gave her his word, for this was almost the way Godric had looked at him last night when he agreed that Eric was not wrong to feel lust for the boy who drank the blood of others, but only human.

Eric and his companions fought Ulfrik one by one. Hrolf and Gunnar proved their own, of course, but Eric found his eyebrows lifting at his father's performance, particularly as he fought the man himself. Ulfrik did not move quite as quickly now as when he had trained Eric on a wooden sword when he was growing up, but even now there was no denying that each sword-stroke still possessed more than a decent amount of force behind it. When they had finished, all four of them were drenched in sweat and panting.

"The two of you are more than welcome to help guard my home while you're on leave," said Father to Hrolf and Gunnar once the four of them had caught their breath. "Crime is thankfully lower now than it could be, but you will be well-compensated in any case." He returned their smiles as he shook their hands. "You have been well-taught—all of you," he added as he, still smiling, looked at his son, and Eric couldn't keep himself from grinning back.

It was some of the highest praise he had ever received from his father.

Despite the wonderful hours Eric spent holding and smiling at his tiny sister, nightfall still could not come fast enough, and when it did, Eric, thinking of Godric's appreciation of his uniform, enlisted Old Elpis's help in donning the soldierly ensemble before going out. He bid his wartime companions farewell from their new posts at the front door—the man who had been there before had been gently reassigned to a job helping Astrid attend to her garden—and resisted a bizarre urge to run to the statue of the laughing satyr. He was, after all, only meeting a possible bedmate, and many of these of both sexes had waited until Eric was ready for them. He settled for a casual, long-legged stride, which turned out to be all that he could manage as the thick crowds of people wandering around among the festivities were waded through.

Finally, the amused, immobilized figure and the stand in front of it came into view—

And there was a peculiar throb of pressure in Eric's chest as he realized the boy was not there.

Perhaps Godric had gotten lost—he had said he hadn't been to the city in a long time, after all. Or perhaps he was cleaning himself up, since he hadn't really bathed with Eric last night...

The thought of those small hands, covered in lather, running up one of the boy's calves caused a stirring in Eric's groin.

"Eric!"

The sound of Godric's voice, already unmistakable to him, sent a thrill surging upward through every inch of Eric's being. He half-turned to find the boy standing next to him, a smile curving those small, pale lips. Eric wanted to kiss them.

"You came back." Though he was still smiling, there was a note of sadness in the youth's voice, and Eric realized that Godric had honestly believed Eric would not meet him tonight.

How many other disappointments had this ex-slave experienced?

Tiny, cold fingers reached up and up to touch his cheek. "You came back," the boy said again, and something in the way he spoke the phrase this time made it easy for Eric to return that small smile with a grin of his own.

"Of course I came back. I'm still determined to convince you that sex with me is the best sex you'll ever experience, after all."

The boy laughed. "I am very much looking forward to being convinced." They began to walk together, along the street past their meeting point. "Did you sleep well?"

Eric nodded. "What do you do in the daytime, since you can't let Apollo's light touch you? Can you sleep?"

"Yes. I find a dark place, usually deep in the earth, or even in a cave when I can find a safe one, and the sun pulls my mind down into slumber as it rises. We can resist it, as you can when you are tired but do not wish to sleep, but when we do it makes us bleed from our noses and ears and can make us very weak."

Eric kept a grimace from showing in his face. "That sounds painful."

Godric nodded. "It is better to rest."

Eric noted with a smile that the boy had fallen into step with him, with Godric's shorter legs moving just a little faster than his own so that he matched his pace. "Do you still dream?"

"Certainly." The boy's ears appeared to have reddened with the question; his gaze flickered up to Eric's and back to the crowded roadway ahead of them. "I... dreamed of you yesterday, after you left."

Eric reached out and casually ran his forefinger down the serpent's head that was inked into the back of Godric's neck. (He had guessed last night that the rest of the animal must descend the boy's spine, but what else was there to hide beneath that overlarge tunic Godric wore?) His grin widened as he watched the boy's eyelids flicker halfway shut. "Was it a good dream?"

"It was a very good dream." Godric's response was little more than a whisper; Eric was forced to lower his head slightly in order to hear it. "The best I've had in a very long time."

Eric smirked. "Rest assured that the reality will exceed your unconscious expectations."

Godric smiled. "I'm hoping it will."

Their walking led them to a courtyard, where they joined the back of a crowd milling before a stage which, by its rickety and creaking boards, looked to have been a hasty construction job. Judging by the fact that togaed actors were already pacing across the stage, and that their mimed actions encouraged the audience's laughter, he and the boy had arrived in the middle of a silent comedic performance.

"This will be a good introduction for you to the plebians' and off-duty soldiers' way of celebrating the gods," he said to Godric, who was standing close beside him. "These are a good laugh, and generally oversexed." Eric quirked a pale brow at the boy, who trembled visibly. In another night or two, hopefully, Eric would feel the vibrations of that small body against his... or perhaps sooner, if the satyr-play did its work.

Two costumed men stood on the stage now: one in a plain brown tunic, the other wearing a white tunic and a gaudily-painted, cheap parody of a military helmet; what it was made of, Eric didn't bother to guess. Each man had a sock tied to the front of the belt around his waist, obviously representing a phallus. The "plebian's" attachment was the same color as his tunic, and hung limply between his hips. The "soldier's" prop was clearly more well-stuffed, as it stood up like an erection, and was painted green with yellow eyes so that it looked like a snake, with a string of tiny bells around its neck and a red forked tongue.

Eric lowered his face to the boy's ear. "That pathetic excuse for a legionnaire would be a disappointment to you: I am larger even than he."

The tip of a pink tongue emerged to cross those pale lips, and Eric felt himself rise to hardness beneath his tunic.

He joined in the audience's laughter when the parody of a soldier gestured from his rival's drooping sock to his own erect one and shook his head with an exaggerated frown. The limp fellow left the stage, shoulders slumped, and was replaced by young woman wearing nothing but a gauzy white length of fabric around her hips; by this and the sensuality of her walk, she was obviously a prostitute. Although, the possibility that all three actors sold themselves for sex in real life was certainly plausible: in Eric's life, he had never met anyone of the stage who earned particularly good coin.

Eric watched Godric's reaction as the girl walked onstage, and couldn't help smiling at the blankness of his face—it was almost boredom. The boy had been true to his word: the female form did not excite him. Eric found his decision to please the boy strengthened by this fact.

The prostitute took the "soldier's" jingling sock in hand. Eric smirked as he watched Godric watch the sock being caressed. The boy's eyes were wide; his hard swallow was visible, although it was difficult to determine through that oversized tunic whether Godric was now as hard between the thighs as Eric was. But it was certain, by the way the boy's eyes darted from the scene before them to Eric to the ground and back again, that Godric was imaging Eric's touch upon him.

There was a very quiet but familiar clicking sound. The boy had his hand over his mouth by the time Eric's gaze had darted over to it; small brows drew together, accompanied by another click, and when Godric lowered his hand there was no trace of those terribly sharp teeth.

"I'm sorry," Godric said quietly, his gaze meeting Eric's as though to communicate sincerity. "This body is... easy to excite."

"So I noticed," Eric smirked. "Shall we walk on—give you a chance to cool down?"

The boy nodded; his smile was adorably sheepish.

They stepped onto the street, joining the stream of people once again.

"Do your fangs come out only when you've been aroused sexually?" Eric asked, still smiling.

Godric shook his head. "They emerge also when I am angry, or at the sight of blood, or if I feel threatened, or when I am particularly hungry. I can also prompt them to emerge or retract as I please."

Eric's brow furrowed. "How do they work?"

"Have you ever seen a serpent that has two long fangs at the front of its mouth, that are much bigger than its other teeth?"

Eric nodded. One of his commanders over the years, when Eric was fresh out of training, had been bitten by one. Unfortunately, the man had died before the camp doctor had been able to determine an antidote to the poison. But someone had killed the snake, and Eric had gotten a glimpse of its mouth when a slave brought the snake to the doctor, and its teeth had been just as the boy described.

"When the snake closes its mouth, those fangs swing up flat against the roof of its mouth." Godric demonstrated with his fingers. "Mine work just like that, except, as I said, I can control the circumstances somewhat, and my outer incisors rest against the roof of my mouth when my fangs are down, while these snakes have no such teeth."

"You find them interesting." Eric could tell by a few nuances in the youth's voice.

Godric shrugged. "Can I help it if the biological similarity between our species made me curious?"

Eric laughed: if the boy's fascination with the military and Eric's armor was any indication, then no, Godric definitely couldn't help himself.

They extricated themselves from the crush of people—an act, thought Eric, that was similar to swimming upstream against a mildly strong current—when they came to one of the large public parks spread throughout the city. A stepping-stone walkway wound through flowerbeds filled with oleanders, crocuses, lilies, amaranth, and other blooms that Mother somehow hadn't had the chance to introduce to him when he was a boy. Marble benches without backs and towering plane trees divided the path into many branches. Except for a pair of elderly couples sitting on the benches nearest Eric and the boy, the park was mostly empty, and wholly quiet.

"It's beautiful here," Godric murmured suddenly, breaking the thoughtful silence between them. He reached down and cupped his hand around the bottom of a spherical purple blossom with many florets, as if he were holding a goblet; his fingers slipped upward through the delicate petals with what appeared to be the utmost gentleness as he released it.

"My mother grows a large number of those in the garden room in our house," Eric said suddenly. He was generally rather hesitant to share the intimate details of the non-sexual aspects of his life with people he barely knew—unless, of course, those details could lead them to his bed. "I could show them to you sometime, if you want."

"That would be nice," Godric replied as they walked on, "although I am not overly interested in flowers. They make a place beautiful, and they smell nice, and I have found that the bees that are attracted to them are interesting to watch once in awhile, now that being stung has so little effect on me. I have studied flowers a little, but like most things they do not hold my interest for long. But I would not mind it if you showed me your mother's garden, all the same." He smiled. "Does she look like you? Your mother, I mean."

Eric nodded. "As do my father and my sister, Floriana." He casually sat upon the next bench they came to, which was situated near the opposite end of the park from where he and the boy had entered it.

Godric remained standing, hands loosely clasped before his groin as though they were used to resting there, his gaze something between hope and resentment.

Then Eric realized what he wanted, and the smile he offered the boy was as much out of pity as encouragement. "You don't need my permission to sit down, you know. Our pact notwithstanding, you are still a free man." Eric indicated the space beside him on the bench with a tilt of the head and a twitch of a brow.

Hesitantly, the boy perched himself on the spot indicated, and Eric returned his smile when he found that Godric had settled himself quite a bit nearer to Eric than he would have guessed. It would be good if his overflow of confidence would rub off on the youth a little, as it appeared to have now, with that simple act of sitting close to Eric.

"This is nice," said Godric, after they had been sitting together in silence for a long moment.

It was nice: every inch of Eric's body on the side nearest to the boy was tingling. He turned halfway towards the boy. "I can show you something else that's nice, if you like."

Godric, who had turned halfway towards Eric in response, looked up at Eric with his head cocked to the side and his brows drawn together; the expression was at once endearing and almost arousing. "What is it?"

"This," said Eric, and, cupping one hand around the back of that small neck and ensnaring Godric's back with his other arm, he kissed him.

A shudder rippled down Godric's body with the first light brush of their lips, and Eric felt every inch of the gesture. He pressed their lips together twice more before he decided the boy would not be frightened by his advancement, sucking gently on first Godric's upper lip and then the lower, alternating the pressure with the barest of licks on them by the tip of his tongue. After several long moments of these repetitions, he decided to delve into Godric's mouth, and tilted his head to deepen the kiss, his tongue brushing the boy's. Like the rest of Godric that Eric had previously had contact with, his tongue was cool, but just as wet as any human's, and sweeter than even Eric could have imagined.

A soft groan accompanied the click of fangs when the boy broke away, presumably so his otherworldly teeth wouldn't hurt Eric, and the new sound brought heat to Eric's groin.

Godric's eyes were wide, and he was panting slightly. "No-one has ever kissed me before."

Eric smiled to hide the fact that he should have expected as much, given the little he knew of Godric's history. "Did you like it?"

"Very much," answered the boy, his sweet lips trembling into a smile. "Would you kiss me again? But be careful of my teeth—it would pain me to see you hurt."

"I would love to kiss you again," Eric said, and he did so, little by little and again and again, long into the small hours of the morning.