Title: Romp
Characters: Edmund and Bacchus
Summary: In which Edmund finds out that Bacchus really is the sort of chap who might do anything.
Notes: Bookverse rather than movieverse. Highly stylized smut. 740 words. Originally written June 2008; I'm not sure why I never posted it here.
The crowd and the dance round Aslan (for it had become a dance once more) grew so thick and rapid that Lucy was confused. She never saw where certain other people came from who were soon capering among the trees. One was a youth, dressed only in a fawn-skin, with vine-leaves wreathed in his curly hair. His face would have been almost too pretty for a boy's, if it had not looked so extremely wild. You felt, as Edmund said when he saw him a few days later, "There's a chap who might do anything—absolutely anything." He seemed to have a great many names—Bromios, Bassareus, and the Ram, were three of them. There were a lot of girls with him, as wild as he. (Prince Caspian, p. 152)
Romp
Edmund never quite sorted it, after, how it came about. There had been the bonfire, blazing up cheerfully, sparks reaching to the heavens, and the goblets of wine passed from hand to hand with laughter and cheer. There were drums and pipes, he remembered that, and dancers who wove in and out of the firelight and reached out to tug anyone nearby into the dance. He thought that might have been how it happened; he remembered talking with a rather earnest pair of Badgers one moment, and then being whirled through a complicated set of dance steps the next.
They weren't the friendly, familiar steps of the Fauns and Satyrs he recalled from his time before, either. He had let Lucy and Tumnus coax him out to dance on those long summer nights, and though he'd never been more than passable, he'd known the steps well. These were different somehow, wild and careless as the Maenads who danced them. Edmund passed from one set of slim hands to the next, bewildered but willing to be agreeable, and when the cup came around to him, drank deep, for dancing was thirsty work. And the dance went on, and on, spilling out into the dimness beyond the ring of firelight, and Edmund went with it.
Yes, that must have been how it started, being whirled around and around and not noticing that the firelight was falling away, until a laughing girl crowned with ivy spun him around, and the next pair of hands to take his belonged to Bacchus.
He remembered that he stumbled, out of surprise, perhaps, and that Bacchus steadied him and laughed, dim light gleaming on features fine as any girl's. The god's laugh was wild as the dance, and he twirled Edmund along and did not release his hands. Edmund went with him, dizzy with the wine and the dancing and the day's triumph, although he could not explain to himself later why he did, save that something in the wildness of Bacchus' face called to him.
He didn't remember the Maenads falling away, or the firelight, until Bacchus whirled him round once more and Edmund found himself in a little dell, hidden from the firelight by the rise of the earth. Bacchus stopped then, and Edmund with him. There they stood, lit by the moon and the stars, hands still clasped together, until Bacchus smiled that strange wild way of his and drew Edmund to him, and kissed him.
Edmund never told anyone what passed between him and Bacchus, and was spared having to fumble for the words to describe it. Even when he tried to sift through his impressions on his own, for his own peace of mind, they were jumbled. The taste of fresh grapes and the tang of wine tangled with summer sweetness and autumn woodsmoke in Bacchus' kiss, and when Bacchus lifted his lips away, Edmund swayed.
"So, Son of Adam?" Bacchus breathed.
It had been his choice; Edmund remembered that much clearly. And he chose to nod, and murmur, "Yes," although he hardly knew what he was consenting to.
The other thing he recalled clearly was the gleam of Bacchus' smile, fey and pleased, as strong hands tumbled him to the grass. And then his recollections grew uncertain again, comprising mostly snatches of sensation: hands that stroked the clothes from his body and kisses that seared his skin, the crisp texture of curls under his fingers as he stroked them through the god's hair and the coolness of grass tickling his bare skin, snatches of music on the breeze and the sounds coming from his own throat, the scent of grass and grapes in his nostrils and the taste of starshine and autumn leaves in his mouth when Bacchus kissed him, and above all the lean hard body pressed against his, moving slow and insistent as the turning of the stars, until everything contracted into a moment of heat and brightness that left no room to register anything else.
When his mind cleared again, he was alone, and the breeze still carried music and laughter with it. He dressed himself, languor slowing his movements, and drifted back to the bonfire. The leaping dancers let him pass unmolested, and when Lucy asked him where he had been, he shrugged and said, "Dancing."
And though the music went on for hours after and she cajoled him, he did not dance any more that night.
end
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