Ares's most perfect and happiest memory tasted of lemon. He was ten in it, and with eight-year-old Hades in the kitchen of their childhood house, they munched on the sour fruits, laughing their asses off at five-year-old Senri doing his best to imitate them. Even twenty years later, whenever shit got bad, he just needed to close his eyes and remember the hilariously confused grimaces on his baby brother's yet adorably round face to feel like he could breathe again.
Move, day by excruciating day, and act out all the willfully assumed roles.
Ares was often asked – both in interviews and private – what made him pick acting. And the answer to this was usually some nonsense his manager thought would satiate the public far more than the truth – which was he played out roles long before he went to acting school and he simply no longer remembered who real Ares was. Only sometimes, looking at his cheerful baby brother, did he catch himself wondering if that would be him if his life turned out differently.
Perhaps that idea, in combination with seeing Senri – so similar to him yet completely different – so absurdly smitten with this redheaded epitome of temptation made it hit home hard how tired he was of acting. Maybe that was what made him feel nostalgic about the hazy memory of a boy who had no more worry on his mind than sour sweetness echoing with his brothers' laughter.
...and then he was confronted with the puzzle of Damon who smelled like lemon – and looked even more painfully adorable than his twin brother. Who, by all accounts should look feminine – with that long red braid, nails, and distinctively more delicate version of Raha's features. But despite his slender figure, one look in those crystalline cyan eyes and past their challenge gave him an impression that the label of either gender simply didn't fit.
Like that puzzle – similarly to what he could see of covering the redhead ink – seamlessly shifted depending on your perception. But as if to make a mockery of his career and endless acting, there was none of it in Damon's eyes. His appearance, chilling intelligence of his bright eyes, and every cue of his body language screamed of complete indifference toward how others perceived him – and it was a hook almost as potent as the citrus aroma that hit his nose when Senri so very not-subtly shoved Raha's twin his way.
Though, admittedly yesterday's resolution and Raha's remark about his brother being into him served to put some of that puzzle pieces down as context. And it very much didn't hurt that somehow the surprise that made those cyan eyes go wide made the already cute face look like fucking magic. That those plush lips of his somehow also tasted like lemon – but so sweet it made his teeth ache – felt almost like a reward of a decision to keep an open mind. It didn't feel like it mattered whether he was male or female with the way Damon after a heartbeat of surprise gave as good as he got.
There was no bashful pretense – Ares was more than used to with women – in the way, the redhead swiftly escalated the kiss meant to be something of a test into an inferno that even quicker emptied his head. When that deceptively delicate hand with long ruby-red nails fisted in his hair, and the novelty of pierced sandpaper tongue invaded his mouth, all sane thought of an unfit place fled at an unprecedented rate. All it left behind was the raw, visceral need to make him submit. To claim and burn in a blaze of a flame that ignited deep down in his gut and scorched all in its path. There were no games, roles, or hesitation, and following the tug of Damon's grip on his hair in the elevator by the entrance of Heaven felt like the most natural thing to do. He barely registered – and hardly cared – when the redhead blocked the door after they slid shut and only growled, swallowing his giggle when little tease had the nerve to get distracted – waving at the camera in a corner of the cabin above.
It felt fucking paramount to force him to cave as he picked up the shorter male and sat him on the wooden railing surrounding the inner, mirror-like walls to make it even. Not while to that Damon wrapped around him like a fucking vice, nearly choking out the air out of him and swallowing that little aggressive noise that shot right to his dick and made Ares dizzy. And there was nothing familiar in the lithe power of the redhead's limbs, not even when Damon tore his shirt open, shoved it off his shoulders, and dug those scarlet nails in his skin. That only made him hazily aware of the need to make it even – return the favor – then wrap that long, elaborate plait around his forearm in a leash and try to make him cave – harder, deeper, hotter – all the while choking on the lemon-scented air thick with need on every desperate, shared breath.
He snarled when the burn of his lungs grew too fucking nagging and pulled back, then before Damon could as much as catch a full breath, Ares used the grip in his hair, tugged his head to the side less than delicate, and sank his teeth in the shoulder free of the colorful ink. And he groaned with satisfaction when that finally – finally – made that blaze in his arms submit, going soft, and pliant, and filling his lowered ears with obedient purring. Making those crystalline irises shine like cyan diamonds from a fittingly dizzy, flushed face when he pulled back to slam the last button on the silver console. And feel fucking high as a kite with the sight he made like this, when Ares grinned maniacally and wrapped his hand under his jaw and went back to tasting those swollen lips, lazily now exploring their heated cavern. Answering his breathy moans and swallowing the vibration of his pleasure-drunk purring getting worse and louder until the cabin dinged and mirror doors to his brother's penthouse slid open.
Damon not only felt but very much looked like magic; like a soft, spoiled kitten, when he picked him up again and without hesitation marched to his temporary bedroom. Even when Ares sniggered, setting him down – carefully – among the black silks, mostly due to the heady rush of adrenaline pumping through his veins, tearing off his remaining clothes felt more natural than breathing. And he couldn't help but grin with his high, getting the mind-bending answer to his question as each piece revealed more of the intricate images covering all of the left side of Damon's body.
„Gorgeous," he muttered, dragging his fingers along the pattern from his shoulder, over the tattooed side and hip to curl his hand under his knee and pull as he leaned in. One could get easily lost looking and trying to figure out all the shifting images hidden in that puzzle, but his priority was something else. The bigger and more nagging pressure of figuring out the answer to the next question that made his dick throb as his eyes skimmed over the display of this feast. From the hands tightly fisted in the sheets around his head, plain and raw need of flushed face, over the needful arch of that little but lithe body, to the silver piercing in his navel and unfamiliar-yet-familiar sight of swollen cock leaking translucent pre-cum and bobbing under his gaze when he shoved the fingers of his free hand in his mouth.
Knowing the principle only made that curiosity more burning when with the pull of his other hand the redhead obediently and without once of shame spread himself wider and purred louder when next put his slicked fingers to his hole, rimmed it, and looked up watching his expression as he pushed in two. He wasn't even aware of growling at the painfully hot and tight grip of his body, feeling like it melted and sucked his digits inside, when Damon's body arched off the mattress, and a mix of something like shock and pleasure turned his face slack. His deafening moan when he came – from this alone – was like a fucking shit to bring his high to wholly uncharted heights.
„...fuck...!" the kitten mewled, then laughed in a breathless noise that trailed off to another moan when Ares grinned like a pleased wolf and curled his fingers in, experimenting to see and hear and feel more. More fucking turned on than ever when that lithe body spasmed and clamped on his fingers when they found and nailed his soft spot. And the sound Damon gave on that – something like a cross between purr and whimper – was more addictive than any drug could ever be before it was all there was – hearing more of it and feeling those muscles inside him clench and flutter – as his eyes and ears feasted on the mind-numbing image.
Until it wasn't enough to feed the flames that stoked only higher and higher. He freed his hands when that slender body among inky silks shook with another round of wrecking it shudders. And watching that completely debauched picture, he shoved at the waistband of his pants, nearly meowing at the relief as he wrapped that hand that was just inside him around his dick and leaned on the other bracing it against Damon's tattoed hip. Then hissed through his teeth – his jaw clenched painfully around a moan – at the first stroke. So busy with the maddening pressure coiling inside him that he nearly jumped out of his skin when his little red kitten still gasping from his orgasm slid down off the edge of the bed and shoved Ares's hand aside, seamlessly exchanging its rough grip for the melting heat of his pretty mouth.
„Fuck...!" it was his turn to swear and groan when that cyan fire behind Damon's eyes tossed him a challenge while scarlet nails dug into his hips. And because he was asking for it so nicely, Ares snarled as he fisted his hand in red hair and gave him what those hot, hungry lips looked like they were made for. Held him down and growled, swallowing another curse at the sensation and sight of his dick disappearing between those swollen lips and the clench of his throat. Moaned in a staggering noise at the too-eager suction as he pulled back with the pinpricks of those long nails demanding more. And nearly yowled, when with another – harder – thrust Damon started purring.
He made it all too easy to forget all about care, and Ares couldn't stop. Not while this cute red kitten begged for it, even choking as his dick cut his air until tears turned his crystal eyes into cyan diamonds. When he panted through his nose, still asking more with his needful, maddening purring. And refused to pull back when Ares snarled a breathless warning when it all became too much and tugged on his red hair. No, Damon only purred louder, expression drunk with the feline satisfaction of a kitten that got in a bowl of cream, hungrily and obscenely slurping until he had nothing more to give. And even had the temerity to pout – his spoiled little kitten – as he pulled back and licked his swollen lips.
I think he's my 'one,' Senri's enamored voice suddenly rang through his head, and Ares snorted then shook his head – chasing it away despite the stupid way his heart jumped for a moment, skipping its already wild rhythm. Yet it returned – louder and as stubborn as his baby brother – when he tugged Damon up and tasted lemon and himself on his pierced tongue.
Damon didn't have a problem admitting when he was wrong, and seamlessly shifting his worldview once circumstances demanded it. He was pretty damn proud of it since it allowed his ever-hungry brain to absorb new information from whatever angle it craved. Caging it via expectations simply didn't lay in his nature – and he was smart enough to realize and assess those special things that demanded to be considered with a different mindset.
That currently being his misconception that getting in Ares's pants would be enough to resolve that ridiculous crush he suffered from since laying his eyes on the beautiful actor. And the notion that he was always quite in full control of all his faculties. The notion that flew right out of the window with a bang when Ares bit him in that elevator and his never-resting brain just... fried. And after that, it refused to cooperate – uncommonly so – while its every attempt to reconnect was mercilessly dashed by nothing more than Ares's commanding touch.
His idea that obsession with figuring out Ares's pattern would lessen was faulty, he realized dimly, sometime about the moment after rummaging through his brother's supplies – and with that absurdly crooked grin – the beautiful man perhaps unknowingly expanded his horizons. And suddenly whatever he long considered boring, felt new and exciting while it was Ares touching him, kissing him, and fucking him into a brainless heap of twitching and spasming ecstasy.
And so once he regained consciousness – and full control of his faculties – sometime later, pinned down by the deadweight of his adorably snore-purring lover, it more than called for a revaluation of his ideas. Especially since he wouldn't be able to move even if he wanted – and he didn't since all that overheated weight covering his body felt very pleasant – he had plenty of time to do so.
At some point, his sensitive ears registered the faraway ding of the elevator arriving at the floor, but he ignored it in favor of figuring out what to do. His brain registered and noted away the sounds of his brother's and Senri's voices filtering through the closed door, then once they quieted down went back to mulling over his shifted worldview.
Most of all, because he was smart enough to figure out when he stumbled onto something special, and so his whole focus shifted to constructing paths and patterns to most efficiently keep it. This was quite fascinating while adding the variable of – so far – Ares's baffling tendency to go off expected script and doing so in a quite spectacular manner, to boot!
Damon must have dozed off, though, lulled into it by the steady rhythm of a strong heartbeat against his back, because next he knew that overheated weight was gone. Surprised – again – because normally it was him slipping away from his lovers' beds and he was generally a light sleeper, he sat up in the middle of the huge bed and looked around the empty room with confusion. Then his sensitive ears picked up the delicate noise of the shower in the adjacent to the bedroom bathroom and he decided to make it his cue.
He managed to get off the bed despite how his quite pleasantly sore body sluggishly refused to cooperate and picked up his clothes scattered beside it on the floor. Damon dressed, fixed his hair as best he could without a mirror in sight, and grimaced at the time when checking his phone. Swiping away a few messages for later, he perched on the edge of the mattress sideways, only delicately twitching his ears and narrowing his eyes when that shower shut off. He carefully kept his eyes focused on the screen when less than five minutes later the door between the bedroom and bathroom opened inviting his nose to waft of steam stuffed with Ares's distinctive scent. Fresh, first came to mind, like the chilly promise of snow thickening the air in the winter.
And as baffling as the tall male that in peripheral vision leaned against the threshold wearing naught but a black towel wrapped around his waist.
„Going somewhere?" He finally heard and looked up at that vision, pointedly ignoring the absurd flutter of his heartbeat as he arched his eyebrows while putting his phone down against his thigh. Uncertainty, another new and not precisely amusing sensation settled somewhere about his gut, tightening at the sight of a genuinely unreadable expression on Ares's beautiful face. Sky-blue eyes narrowed, focused, and intent, but somehow he couldn't figure out what meant those shimmering glints between the veils of inky lashes.
„Depends," he replied with a delicate shrug, pushing the phone into the pocket of his jeans as he stood up. A flick of an inky tail made his eyes drift toward the movement and then back, wondering if it was agitation of him still being here that made it twitch – or something else. And again, that uncertainty and its novelty made his pulse spike when Ares pushed off the threshold and soon stopped in front of him, forcing Damon to look up – all the while keeping his expression neutral. Not intimidated by the massively bigger male – far too fucking skinny for his liking – but too unsure about the way his expression hardened to decide between possibilities of his predictions.
„On what?" there was a drop in Ares's already low voice, as his left hand lifted but Damon didn't let his face twitch even when the male's fingers wrapped around his chin and tilted his head. Ares leaned in until there was no more than a slim space between their noses, and that intensity behind his eyes grew into something almost scary as his nostrils flared barely noticeably. The air seemed to get thicker, darker, and charged with crushing pressure. Like gravity that made him feel dizzy – lightheaded – while his body outside of the control of his brain melted and his ears laid flat against his head, stuffed with the static and noisy rhythm of his uneven heartbeat. And as if he was waiting for it, Ares's eyes sparked with something his brain sluggishly translated – satisfaction – and only then did Damon realize dimly that that noise that seemed to echo about his empty head was his own purring.
„Like magic," Ares growled under his breath and his own lips parted with a gasp, tasting his air a second before his head was tipped and his mouth was covered by another. Rough and demanding, as that hand from his chin moved to his neck, and then all his leftover clarity drowned in the taste of sandpaper tongue that invaded and claimed his mouth. Before he could realize the shift, he was on his back, with all that overheated weight on top of him, shoving between his legs and rubbing against him suggestively when his limbs by themselves wrapped around it. His nails dug into pale skin, as he fought to catch his breath when Ares suddenly pulled back. „Like addiction," he snarled and then turned his head to bury his teeth in the junction of Damon's neck and right shoulder. But this time feeling that maddening haze climb up, he fisted his hand in his dark, wet hair and tugging, with his own no less possessive snarl he returned the favor.
Mine, echoed through his head like a fucking gong as he tasted the copper tang of the essence of a drug. And drowned in a deafening thunder of his heartbeat, matching the one against it as the weight on top of him went limb with breathless noise of surprise. Shock, that echoed through his veins as his blood rushed pumping the surge of adrenaline. He laughed – utterly out of breath – with building hysteria around his bite. Unable to pull back as his fangs elongated and throbbed, while the rest of his body shifted and spasmed with maddening pressure coiling low in his gut with every thump of their synchronized heartbeats.
Higher, louder, painful as their hands in impossible sync tore at the separating them materials, raging for the destruction of anything but skin. And only free of it – of all – and driven solely by instinct, he growled impatiently, shifting and utterly crazed with need until Ares took him. Confirmed his possession with a primal noise of satisfaction, Damon blindly raked his nails down his lover's spine, then dug them in his ass – hard enough to cut – demanding the brutal rhythm Ares more than matched. Pulling his legs up to wrap high around his sides, he ground into him on every desperate stroke to get closer, deeper, harder, until the itching throbbing of his teeth subsided and Damon could pull back with hissing breaths. They shifted simultaneously and he tasted copper of his blood on Ares's tongue, taking his mouth with an obsession matching the mounting and crazed rhythm of their bodies.
Then the sparks in his veins ignited into combustion as their mixed blood reached the end of the process and Damon's brain shattered in the white implosion of pleasure that eroded and dimmed any memory of his earlier experience. Made it all puny and less than a shadow of the supernova that wrecked his body long after they collapsed into a soaked heap of trembling, spasming muscles. All spun but his shaky hands gingerly climbed up Ares's back, his right soon sliding through wet ink-dark hair and saying the itching sensation at the back of his head demanding it. Noisy and happy purring intensified when Ares rubbed his face against his throat in thanks, sniffing him intently and Damon couldn't help but snort at his silliness. Rubbing his ear absentmindedly, drowning in the thick layer of the most intense afterglow that refused to let his brain reconnect and analyze the situation, it felt completely natural to let his empty head drift.
Until the shrill of his phone cut through the fog. One time, two, three...
Four.
Five.
Six, while Damon finally frowned, annoyed by the noise and Ares growled a curse, then shifted them both, blindly reaching toward the direction of the sound. Seven, by the time he dragged his torn jeans, all the while refusing to move back. Eight, while Damon snickered, somehow managing to fish out the shrilling device behind his lover's head. He narrowed his slightly swimming gaze toward the name on the screen and sighed.
It started to ring the ninth time by the time he finally had enough of it and picked up, despite Ares's noisy grumble pressing it against his cheek as he closed his eyes.
„Yes, brother?" He muttered with annoyance. „And it better be important," he added petulantly, running fingers of his free hand through his lover's matted, messy hair.
„Considering all that noise earlier, I wouldn't call if it wasn't," Raha replied, and Damon blinked slowly because he sounded nervous like hell and – curiously – like he was whispering. „So get you two decent, asshole, because their parents are here and they are dying to meet you."
„Huuuh?" He choked out, while Ares went completely stiff and stopped breathing.