Bride of the Snippet
by Mythdefied
February 2000

Ares smirked. "Yeah, sure, whatever. And when you lose you go back through the vortex and stay there."

Except for the opportunity to be rid of "Ares, God of Looove" for good, he never would've taken this bet. The wimp had taken to showing up far too often lately and at the worst possible times. None of Ares' warlords would dare laugh in his presence, but he knew the sight of a white clad, limp-wristed version of him walking around wasn't doing anything good for his reputation. He had to get this twit out of his world.

So when "Ares" offered him a bet, he'd taken it without hesitation. Now lying here in a far too comfortable bed, waiting for him to get on with it, the God of War knew there was no way he could lose.

"Too tight?" asked his far too pretty counterpart, running a finger over the shackles around Ares' ankles.

"They're supposed to be tight, you idiot!" Ares snapped. "Look, why don't you just give it up now? You are way out of your depth. I've been tortured by the best here on my world and none of them ever made me beg for mercy."

"You mean your Caesar, don't you? I've met him. He lacks...imagination." Smiling patiently, the God of Love moved up onto the bed and straddled Ares. With a flick of his fingers their clothing disappeared. "Oh, he's certainly vicious," he shuddered dramatically, "but he just doesn't understand the true art of torture."

"Oh, and I suppose you do?" Ares snorted in amusement.

"Of course. The first rule is to understand your subject -- and I do understand you." He trailed a finger down Ares' chest, stopping at a nipple to lightly rub it, bringing it erect. "Pain is sort of redundant with you; that's something your Caesar will never get. Breaking you will take something more...inventive. You'll lose, Ares. You won't just beg me for mercy, you'll cry for it."

Beneath him, Ares frowned slightly, a bit of his amusement disappearing. That sounded far too confident.

Then the God of Love moved off him, sitting beside him. A wave of his hand and a pile of pastel colored silk pillows appeared behind him as a back rest.

"What're you doing?" Ares asked, no longer quite sure what was going on. "You said 'torture' when we made this deal."

"I will torture you," his counterpart agreed, "but I don't need to touch you to do that." A large scroll appeared in his hand. "See, I wrote this just for you."

"Wrote?"

"'Ode to Ares, God of War', a love poem in three thousand verses," he smiled with a touch of pride. "I showed it to your God of Love here and he says it sucks, but I think he's just jealous. I mean, not everyone is talented enough to come up with a few thousand rhymes for 'sugar-mumps'."

Ares stared at him for a moment longer, eyes widened in horror. Then he started to pull frantically at the Hephaestian manacles, futily trying to break the links as the God of Love began reading....

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