4. The Benumbed #2
“Oh! There you are,” Balder said, though any real surprise quickly faded, becoming as docile as his smile.
To find him handsome was no surprise. He was often called the fairest of the gods, even above Freyr.
His eyes were amber, almost golden, same as his hair and beard.
The beard was shorter than Freyr’s more medium length, and his chin length hair hung wavy and free.
He was dressed as simply as Hel, in dark trousers and a sleeveless white tunic, with no adornments, save equally simplistic leather bracers.
Although, upon those bracers, was a stitched depiction of the very plant that had spelled his doom.
Mistletoe.
Besides being the fairest, Balder was said to be the embodiment of charm and magnetism. Yet here, now, he was a shell of the man, the god , he had once been in the scene where the others praised him, and his eyes said he knew it.
“Could it be? The incomparable god Balder, depressed ?”
Balder’s smile twitched. He supposedly radiated more light than gleaming Heimdall, but it was muted now, like everything about him. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”
“Indeed. I was told you expected me, but in my experience, a sad fuck isn’t as therapeutic as one might think.”
He laughed. “I can see why Loki likes you.”
“I don’t know about that. Revels in tormenting me, yes, but then, he’s like that with everyone, isn’t he?”
“You may be surprised.”
I often was, especially since meeting gods.
Balder patted the bed beside him, so I sat with him, facing the scene of his dreaming. His nightmares of death.
“Loki killed you,” I stated the well-known fact.
“Well, Hod did, but it was Loki’s doing.
Then, if some stories are correct, when Hel said she would return you to life if all living things mourned you, and all did, Loki disguised himself as someone who refused, and you remained dead throughout Ragnarok. ”
“Yes,” Balder said with a contented sigh. “A fine gift as an apology for my demise.”
“Gift?”
“I wasn’t ready to return. Even after Ragnarok, I am still not ready. But it is not pity I seek, young mortal.”
“Oli.”
“Well met, Oli. Help me feel alive again, so I might believe my rebirth is warranted.”
As Balder reached for me, even if not meant to be about pity, I felt it for the solemn god. He might not have the countenance of an Aesir right now, but he used the strength of one to pull me onto his lap and kiss me. It was a good, hard, deep kiss, but it sank my heart like a stone.
His sadness was different from Freyr’s. It made me want to go slow, be tender, be caring with this fragile deity.
Then he moved us up the bed, sprawling us so I tipped on top of him, and brought one of my hands to his throat like Heimdall had. “We may be in Hel already, but I wish to be reminded of my death.”
“What?” I snatched my hand away from him. “You said you wanted to feel alive.”
“Yes, but every moment, awake or asleep, I see my death again, just like in my dreams. I cannot escape it. Please. I need to know I can surpass this. Survive its terror. Live again.” He seized me by my tunic and wrenched me into a harsher kiss.
The scene of Balder’s funeral pyre was in full blazing glory behind the headboard, and as I glanced up to watch his corpse smolder and blacken, I could smell it.
Not anything rancid, but the thick, smokey scent of a bonfire, still in his hair and on his skin.
Was I imagining it? Everything felt hazier the more he sucked on my tongue.
Balder brought my hand to his throat again, and I let him, but I kept my grip lax, no matter how much he tried to make me tighten it. I wasn’t sure if I could tighten it. I felt dizzy. Strange.
“B-Balder—”
“Please. I feel like a phantom. Rebirthed like the Greek stories of a phoenix rising from its own ashes, yet I still returned here.”
“Why?”
He kept trying to kiss me again, to goad me into continuing to ravage him, but I held him still, using my hand on his throat to pin him without squeezing.
The bed seemed to sway, like we were on the same skiff where his corpse had burned.
“ Please .” Balder’s voice echoed, distant and yet too close, as if… as if…
I’d been poisoned.
I pitched to the side, realizing that the swaying, the haze and dizziness, meant something was wrong with me.
“This pit in me,” Balder sobbed, climbing atop me, but all I could see were shapes and shadows.
“It has not been banished with my resurrection. Do you understand? How can I return to my brethren as lesser than what I was? How ? How…?” He materialized clearer above me, enough for me to watch his eyes dart to the side and up along the wall replaying his death.
“Lesser?” I tried to focus, to not give in to the taint of his kiss that had no reason being there. “What… makes you lesser?”
“Because, for a moment that day, I welcomed my death.”
The fog of the poison left me, and my vision and sense of surroundings returned. There was no real taint to Balder’s kiss, only his belief that one should be there.
I reached for him, drawing his attention back to me.
“Why? You had everything. You were the favorite. The one your own family, the one all the gods loved and still love most. You were—”
“Perfect? Do you have any idea what it is like for everyone you know, and everyone you don’t know, to think you’re perfect?
Nothing, nothing other than a draught of the weed that killed me could ever harm me, all my life.
When so little can even touch you, you begin to feel numb, even before your body dies. ”
“Balder…”
“It was only in death that I realized how numb I had become. If I am to live, I need to shine brightly again. But to do so, I need to feel .” He took my hand from his cheek and moved it back to his throat, trying again to make me squeeze. “Please. Bring me to the brink, so I might feel something.”
“But why? Why like this?”
He stared at me, eyes swimming, and then looked behind him at the opposite wall. “It is what I dreamed.”
I had to look too, around him at the scene of his nightmares. I couldn’t see the dreams themselves, just Balder in disturbed sleep, but he clutched at his neck in the throes of his dreaming. Suffocating. Gasping for breath.
“It was the same then as when I died for real.”
“You were lung-pierced?”
“No.” He chuckled.
“But wasn’t the mistletoe that killed you hurled at you attached to a spear?”
Again, he laughed, pitiless of his plight. “Wouldn’t that have been a worthier tale? One that might have earned Valhalla? No, the plant fell into my cup, poisoned me, and my throat closed.”
I feared the sudden closing of my own throat then, but the poisoning I had experienced was only an echo. Balder was the one reliving it. He’d felt like a disappointment when he died. He felt that way now. And death, Hel , had seemed welcome to escape that.
He tried to reinvigorate my hold on him, but I used the leverage of my hand on his throat to roll us the other way and put myself on top again.
How often had I convinced myself that liking or wanting something I actually didn’t somehow gave me power?
How often had I been brought so low that I allowed worse?
“Oli, please—”
“Do you have scarves? Strips of fabric? Anything like that?”
Balder tilted his head at me. “This is Hel. You can have whatever you will into existence.”
I took my hand from Balder’s throat and held it out, envisioning what I wanted. In an instant, two sturdy lengths of cloth appeared, blue like my tunic.
I urged Balder to sit up so I could relieve him of his tunic first. There were slats making up the headboard, allowing me to wind the strips of fabric around them and around Balder’s wrists. He looked pleased when he realized what he thought I intended.
But pain was not the path to escaping numbness. I was learning that too.
“You are not perfect, Balder. You never were. You never need to be.” I licked up his throat.
He bucked his hips, and I opened our trousers for our naked cocks to collide. I did not move my hips in kind but let my weight rest upon him. I licked the side of his neck and up beneath one of his ears. I licked the lobe. The shell. The inside.
Balder bucked again, but every movement only made me press more weight upon him. As I suckled his ear and neck, I drifted one hand down his chest to thumb his nipples. I was fleeting with my touch, making him pant and squirm as he grew harder and more desperate.
“Please… be harsher.”
“No.”
“You are here to help—”
“I am going to help you, Balder. Harsh, hard, neither is what is needed for you to feel. My masters tried to make me believe I needed that too. You are your own master, but as it seems you do not know how to treat yourself kindly, let me show you.”
I canted my hips, slowly, and as I played with Balder’s nipples, his ears, the sinew of his throat, I did not allow him to hasten our pace.
This was not the same as Thorsten with me, or what I’d thought I wanted with Heimdall.
I didn’t want to deny him for my sake but to take our time, so he could remember what good felt like instead of accepting feeling anything.
The scent of the bonfire strengthened, like part of Balder still believed he was lost to the fire. “What a marvelous smell,” I said.
“What? It’s awful. Terrible—”
“You.” I curled my fingers around his throat but squeezed only lightly, only enough to make him gasp and not lose his breath entirely.
“You smell like a survivor. Like someone who stumbled but can get up. At least to this lowly mortal, my respect is for someone who has been brought low and risen again, not for someone who never knew hardship.” I sat up to better shove our trousers lower and took our cocks in hand.
“Oli…”
“You are not perfect, and you never need to be. Right now, you need only be good for me, and to feel good in return.” Stroking our cocks together, I ran the blunt nail of my thumb along his slit.
“Ah!”