The Perfect Holiday After All
by Max

Benjamin looked around the God-forsaken town he had drifted into the night before. It truly was a one-horse town. But, the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. It was an entirely different atmosphere than the city of Charles Town he had left behind. He felt anonymous. And that was good.

***********************

Ten years had passed. His second wife Charlotte was gone in childbirth just like his Elizabeth had suffered, although, this time, there had been no baby left behind. It had just about broken him completely. Forsaking women, the only comfort remaining in his hand, he had put every effort left in him into working on the re-built plantation and keeping it prosperous for his children.

His eldest daughter, Margaret, married the year before and took his youngest, Susan, with her to her new home in Boston to help when the first babe was birthed. And his three sons, all men now, had taken on the plantation, expanding it and readying it for their wives. That had left Benjamin alone, no more children to raise ...... nothing to do. He no longer felt needed as anything more than a storyteller of how the war had been won .... and he was tired of it. He was tired of people honoring him, toasting him and reminding him of his loss; especially on the holiday he dreaded the most, the Fourth of July.

He had known it was time to leave.

After having spent more and more time in the forest, alone, trying to come to terms with his past and his bleak future, Benjamin Martin had one day up and decided that what he needed to do was to travel. He needed to travel out west to an area recently under expansion that he had never seen and never would see if he didn't do it before what little life was left in his bones withered and died.

*********************************

His thoughts back on the present, Benjamin walked into the tavern. -- No matter where you travel, there always seems to be watering holes for men, -- he thought ruefully. And this tavern was no different. Similar to all the others since crossing the Mississippi; two-story buildings with men playing cards or drinking and haggard-looking wenches wandering around or sitting on their laps.

"Whiskey," he grunted to the bartender and sat down to order a meal.

And that's when it happened. He saw a flash of long dark hair and chiseled cheeks and almost choked on his whiskey.

-- Tavington?! Alive?!- - It took every ounce of his willpower not to simply pull out his pistol and shoot.

-- No. A trick of the light. Must be, -- he thought next and tried to look closer at the man in the corner to be certain of his identity before spilling his blood.

It was no trick of the light, however, and Benjamin knew that in his gut ... knew that the murderer who had taken his two sons from him was now sitting across the room drinking and fondling a woman. And with that instinctual knowledge came certainty. Benjamin was going to get his revenge .... soon.


CHAPTER 2

An hour later, a very intoxicated Tavington followed the woman up the stairs to a room. Scant moments after, Benjamin was right behind them, listening at the door.

-- Strange,- - he thought. -- No sounds of passion. -- And just about ready to force the door open, the woman came out, looking quite angry that she wouldn't be paid because the man had fallen asleep. The whore took one look at Benjamin, saw the look in his eye and quickly hurried down the stairs to leave the man with the faint British accent to his fate.

Benjamin stepped into the room, and his blood boiled again at being so close to the man. Tavington was lying on his back on the bed, sound asleep, quite unprepared for what was about to happen. He looked ...... older. His face may have been worn from living cast out of polite society after the British lost the war, but he was still a remarkable looking man, and it pained Benjamin to see that beauty when his two fine sons were long dead in the ground.

Naturally, Tavington was no longer dressed neatly in stylish military clothing. He actually looked very similar to Benjamin in attire, having been forced to dress like a peasant and survive the best that he could while staying hidden from hangings in the initial aftermath of the war. He had discovered much earlier, like Benjamin had just recently, that one of the allures of going west was being able to live in anonymity in a land where no one bothered you if you didn't bother them; a land where there was little or no law; a land that was perfect for people like him, especially if they tended to chafe under authority as he did.

The drunken sleeping man never even felt it when Benjamin quite efficiently tied his arms and legs spread eagled to the posts. Never even heard Benjamin leave and come back with a bottle of whiskey and then proceed to drink half the bottle down swiftly as if to strengthen himself for what he was about to do. The drunken sleeping man never heard or felt a thing.

His first thought upon awaking, however, was that it must have been raining, as liquid was splashing on his face. But opening his mouth for a moment, he realized immediately that it wasn't rain after all .. it was urine. Hot and steady it flowed down on him, and he opened his eyes, staring in disbelief at seeing Benjamin Martin of all people standing over him with his trousers partly unlaced. It wouldn't have surprised him anymore than if it had been his old superior Cornwallis.

"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL?" he shouted and shook his head in a vain attempt to move out of the way of the cascading arc.

SLAP! Benjamin simply reached down and cracked him across the face, shutting him up for a moment to glare in fury at his old enemy.

Under Tavington's own icy glare, Benjamin smirked, pushed himself back into his trousers and laced up before sitting back down and crossing his legs as though in polite conversation. "Is that any way to greet me?" he asked with a slight slur in his voice.

Benjamin was much more intoxicated than he appeared, while Tavington was now quite sober from his short nap and, quite frankly, from fear. "Greet you?" he sputtered up at him, as urine spat from his mouth. "You pissed on me!"

A slow smile spread across Benjamin's face and lit his eyes in madness. It was a look on the man unlike Tavington had ever seen, and he instantly knew he was clearly in trouble, serious trouble.

"You're going to wish that was all I did on you," Benjamin replied in an almost pleasant tone while he pulled out his long knife.

In two cuts, Tavington's shirt was off and the blade pressed under a firm nipple. Tavington showed not a hint of fear. If anything, he smirked, waiting for Benjamin to do his worse.

His worse, at that point, though, was not very much.

The knife trailed around the hard nub, flicking the skin just enough to bring pinpricks of blood to the surface. Then, down it went through the soft hairline of his abdomen to linger over the fastenings of his trousers. "Perhaps you'll beg me to spare your life now?" Benjamin mused very quietly while he held the knife very still.

"Perhaps you'll do what you REALLY want to do?" Tavington spit back in challenge.

The Patriot's head cocked, confused. "And what would that be?"

"I think you know," the Brit's voice lowered huskily. "I think you knew that time you passed me at the fort. Your eyes were burning, almost as much as now."

"Damn you," Benjamin snapped and pulled the blade back up to pace around the room. "Damn you to eternal hell for what you did to my family!"

"Oh for the love of God, man!" Tavington snorted in exasperation. "That was TEN years ago! You have to move on! It was WAR! Don't you think I suffered too? My life was ruined! I have NOTHING now! Nothing but memories of YOU!"

"THOMAS WASN'T WAR!" Benjamin roared and slapped him again. "He was a boy! Not a soldier!"

Tavington's face contorted in rage, and a large handprint showed on one side. "What do you want, Martin? An apology for murdering your precious son? Well, YOU can go to hell! I NEVER regret my actions!"

A lie.

Tavington did eventually come to regret that action. It wasn't until the day he held a child in his hands, a child of his own that was handed to him by a midwife when the woman he was bedding died, that he realized just how much Martin must have suffered for the cold-blooded killing of his younger son. Gabriel wasn't regretted, not in the least. He was a soldier, plain and simple. And the murder of the townspeople, he couldn't regret that either. Pulling the trigger on that young boy, though? THAT he did regret. But William Tavington would be damned before he'd admit it to anyone, especially to Martin.

"I want .... I want ....," Benjamin shouted, trying to get it out, trying to make sense of it even to himself. "I WANT MY LIFE BACK!" And he collapsed back in the chair to suck down more whiskey.

Derisive laughter followed him.

Tavington couldn't help but laugh at the picture Martin portrayed. He may have been the one shirtless and tied to a bed, but Martin, a hero of the We're So-Tough-Now-Revolutionary War, was the one who looked truly pathetic.

"Do you honestly think, Martin," he finally managed to get out between snorts of laughter, "that killing me will bring back your life, or your sons?"

"SHUT UP!" Benjamin bellowed and lashed out with his booted foot, kicking Tavington square in the side of the hip to be awarded with a very satisfying grunt of pain for his effort.

Twenty minutes passed in silence until Benjamin looked up from the now empty whiskey bottle. "You reek."

"Of course I do, you stupid Yank! You pissed on me!"

"Stay here," he grunted, then laughed softly to himself at realizing the joke of it.

Tavington didn't miss the joke either. His eyes simply rolled in annoyance as if to say ... Duh!

Five minutes later Benjamin was back with towels, a basin of water and two bottles of whiskey.

"Hold still," he ordered and moved towards the man with a wet towel.

"Like I have any choice," Tavington replied acidly.

Within a minute his face, neck and hair were clean enough, and with the wet pillow his head had been on thrown out the window, the odor was gone.

"If we're going to be here a while," Tavington shrugged as best he could with his arms tied, "how about placing that other pillow under my head?"

"No," was the only reply.

"Fine, be a savage. Tie a man up, piss on him, cut his shirt in pieces and now let his neck get a crick."

"WOULD - YOU - SHUT - UP?"

A very male, very British grin flashed.

Tavington knew he was getting to Martin. Getting to him good. Just a matter of time before the man made a mistake and their positions were reversed. Or so he hoped. Tavington had a history of underestimating Benjamin Martin, and history has a way of repeating itself, especially by men who may be outwardly different in ten years, but were still just as arrogant and over-confident inside.

"How about a swallow of that whiskey?" he asked at the feeling of his lips beginning to go dry. Whether it was from fear or morbid anticipation, he wasn't sure and didn't really care. -- Probably both, -- he mused. He wasn't a fool not to know when to admit fear to himself. Fear helps keep you alive. But he WAS a man who very rarely ever showed outwardly that undignified emotion, and he certainly wasn't about to now.

"Why not?" Benjamin muttered mostly to himself. -- Can't seem to just kill the man .. yet. -- And he lifted the bottle to Tavington's lips, realizing now that a pillow really was needed.

Once the pillow was in place, Tavington took long slow drinks and purposely mouthed the bottle in a way that he knew would get to Martin. If he hadn't seen it in his eye that day they passed at the fort and in his eye when the blade was being flicked around his nipple, he never would have believed that Martin was the kind of man that would desire another man. Also, he suspected that Martin had never really come to terms with it, that he had buried it between wives, lots of children, and a fear of God, unlike himself, who openly used women or men, whichever happened to catch his fancy at the moment.

Tavington was absolutely right.

Benjamin had never really come to terms with it. It had been, at first, forced on him as a very young fighter in the Wilderness Campaign by much larger older men. But, with time, a seasoned Benjamin had found himself doing the very same thing for much needed relief. He had taken it whenever he needed it, no longer submissive to anyone, but he had always tried to make it a little less brutal than it had been for him. Marriage had followed soon after the war, and, with that, he had thought the desire for men had left him. It wasn't until many years later when he crossed paths with Tavington during the next war that he had felt the very old familiar stirring in his loins, and now he just wasn't quite sure what should be done, if anything, about it.

It was reprehensible in his mind to want to take Tavington in that way; to be intimate, even in causing the man intense pain, after what had been done to his family. But, still, it wasn't quite reprehensible enough to keep the thought from continually pressing into his mind, where it traveled down to tighten his groin and back up to make his eyes burn with desire.

"You like men?" Benjamin asked, as he finally pulled his eyes away from the luscious lips that sucked on the bottle under his hand.

"Yes, and women," Tavington smiled up at him with a very keen glint in his eyes. "You?"

"NO!" Benjamin answered quickly. "Just women."

"Martin, Martin, Martin," Tavington drawled. "Maybe you can lie to everyone around you, even to yourself, but you can't lie to me. I'm your personal devil. Remember? I know you better than you do yourself."

"You're nothing to me," Benjamin protested weakly, although the neck of the bottle ran up and down Tavington's cheek and then down under that sharp virile chin to caress the other side. It was almost as though Benjamin didn't even realize he was doing it.

"If I'm nothing," Tavington turned his face into the bottle to show he enjoyed it, "then untie me. Prove it."

"NO!" His other hand moved and grasped around his prisoner's neck to squeeze. "You have to pay for what you did!"

Benjamin was still just as unpredictable as ever.

"Then do it!" the choking man rasped. "Make me pay! Just bloody well get it over with! You're wasting my time!"

For a second there, Tavington was sure the man was, indeed, going to do it. The large calloused hand around his neck tightened even more, the blue eyes went wild with hatred, and the strikingly handsome face lowered only inches from his own.

And that's when something startling happened to Benjamin Martin ... again.

Tavington moved his head up with every bit of strength he had under that hand and closed the distance to press his lips firmly onto Benjamin's.

"LORD!" Benjamin gasped and pulled away to immediately wipe his arm across his mouth.

"Oh please, Martin," Tavington sneered through a coughing fit from the strangulation. "Don't pretend it isn't the first man's lips you've felt."

"IT IS!" he exclaimed indignantly. "I never! No one ever! It was always just .. just ...."

"Just what?"

"I think you know," Benjamin deliberately repeated back the same words spoken to him earlier in the increasingly disturbing encounter that should have ended right after it began.

"Yes," the raven-haired man nodded with understanding. "I know what you mean. It was never done for mutual pleasure. But you still managed to find pleasure eventually, didn't you? And then the need wouldn't quite go away? Like an itch that needed relief, an itch under the skin that even your two lovely wives couldn't quite scratch well enough no matter what you tried with them."

Benjamin didn't bother to answer. He simply stared for a moment and looked away. -- How can he know so much about me? --

"It isn't always brutal between men. Release me and I'll show you." -- I will, at first. And then he'll wish he had never stepped foot in this town. --

"And stab me when I'm not looking?" Benjamin scowled. "I'm no fool."

"I have no desire to stab you," he practically purred seductively, "only teach you." -- UNDER ME! -- "Then, if you wish, we can duel like gentlemen with pistols. Fairly until one of us dies."

"You don't know anything about being fair!" Benjamin's fist slammed down on the table next to him. "Killing Thomas wasn't fair!"

Tavington lost his temper, the whiskey in him having loosened his tongue.

"You don't think I know what's fair?" he shouted, straining against the ropes in frustration. "My son was killed by a filthy tobacco farmer over a PIG! He was only THREE!"

"Son?" Benjamin looked at him in shock, as his mouth practically fell to the floor. "You had a son .. here in America?"

"YES!" he laughed loudly, almost manically. "Been dead four years now. Tore out the stinking heart of the man who killed him."

"Were .. are you married?" -- Why in God's name do I care? --

"Hell no!" his laughter calmed. "Stupid woman died giving birth. Just a bitch I fucked once in a while."

"Sorry," Benjamin mumbled into the whiskey bottle at the thought of innocent loss of life.

"Sorry?" he laughed contemptuously. "About what? That the woman died or my son died or that we're both here in this shitty little town with no one but each other now?"

"I . I have family," Benjamin tried to protest, although he didn't quite look Tavington in the eye when he said it.

"Sure you do," the man smiled in a very cruel way. "That's why you're with them right now, not playing torture-the-defenseless-man-who-I-really-want-to-bugger."

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" Benjamin roared and stood to throw the whiskey bottle smashing into the wall. "Is that what YOU want?" he asked, pulling out his knife again. "You want me to fuck you? Is it? Well, I will NOT enter that ring of hell for YOU! But I'll damn well take your manhood now!" And off came the trousers, as the knife tore through them in a way that left long shallow slices on the body beneath.

It set Tavington's teeth on edge from the sharp little agonies of that knife slicing him, but he wasn't about to give Martin the satisfaction of crying out over something so minor. Besides, for some reason, even though he was terrified, he had a strong feeling that his old enemy wouldn't actually go through with it; that the man may be enraged but he would not truly go so far as to castrate him.

Tavington really didn't have a clue as to just how far Benjamin Martin was readily willing to go.

Within moments Tavington was naked and blood ran from the small wounds on his legs. It fascinated Benjamin, made him feel suddenly as though he'd never seen blood before. Before he could stop himself, his fingers smudged up a bit, rolled the wetness between them and brought it towards his face. His mouth opened at feeling an over-whelming primal need to taste this specific man's blood rise within him, until he caught sight of Tavington's eyes dancing at him, dancing as though he found Benjamin to be so very .. amusing.

Fingers wiped the blood on his trousers instead, and he brought the knife back up to the man's lower stomach to trail it downward, curling it through the wiry hair he encountered before the blunt edge of it circled directly around the groin for a few very long moments. They were, most likely, the longest moments of Tavington's entire life.

They were certainly moments that affected Benjamin too.

The musky pure male scent of this man intoxicated him in a way he had never felt before, a way that aroused him to a before unknown extreme. Tavington could even see by the way his tormentor wavered slightly, his nostrils flared, as his other hand gripped tightly to the blankets he was sitting on, that, oh yes, indeed, his lithe muscular body was very much wanted by Martin, wanted urgently.

When Benjamin felt composed enough again, the knife's blunt edge moved down an inner thigh and back up, then dipped beneath the large scrotum to press the tip against the sensitive area right between the far spread legs. Tavington was just as fully aroused as Benjamin, but as much as he tried to catch the Colonial's eyes with his own, it wasn't going to happen. Benjamin was too far into his exploration of the captivating body at his disposal, and he knew that if he looked up into the demon eyes burning into him with the call of temptation, he'd roll over and lose the fight.

It wasn't until the tip of the blade flickered ever so gently over a corner of his rim muscle did Tavington actually gasp out loud, as his manhood twitched and wept his essence. Benjamin heard the gasp and started to look up, but the sparkle of the candlelight in the room caught that bit of moisture hanging on the tip of the man's length, and that sparkle caught Benjamin's eye, forcing him to struggle with control of another primal craving.

Tavington, of course, being the devil, could sense the man's burgeoning need.

"Have you ever tasted?" the snake smile bored down on the man like unto Adam in the Garden of Eden.

"No," Benjamin whispered throatily and gulped in anxiety, "but I'm sure you have."

"Of course. Go ahead Martin," he whispered back smoothly. "Take a lick. No one will ever know."

The long shaggy chestnut head of hair, unruly from having pulled out of its tail on his back, shook, as though trying to cast something out. "You truly are the devil trying to tempt me."

"Is it working?" an evil eye arched up at him.

As if in answer to himself, Tavington suddenly inhaled loudly in pain, shocked to feel the sharp side of the blade cut a line right up his manhood from base to tip, opening the flesh just enough to hurt like hell and bleed like a virgin on her first bedding. "Lovely," he hissed through the torturous sting, knowing it wasn't fatal or truly damaging. "Now I'll have a nice scar to show off."

"You seem confident you'll have anything remaining to show," Benjamin's lip crooked, as he glanced up from watching blood run down the rigid member. And something about the way he said it told Tavington that this wasn't the first time Martin had put a knife to a man's groin, and that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't going to survive this terrifying yet stimulating encounter after all.

Benjamin had indeed done worse to the enemy during the Wilderness Campaign than Tavington had been made to suffer on the bed. He and his men were no innocents when it came to dismemberment of any body piece in order to wreck terror in the hearts of their enemies. And, as it turned out, that blood-thirstiness in taking revenge for the civilians that had sought refuge in a fort and been slaughtered for it, had ended up being the turning point in the war, bringing victory to their side.

He had thought that savageness in him for blood had been slackened forever by the enemy massacre he had willingly participated in as a young man, until he had once again found himself forced to feed the beast, the second time during the Revolutionary War. But, unlike either time, he hadn't been trying to torture a man like he was now, not in the deep-in-his-heart-desire-to-do-more-than-kill-a-man-for-revenge way that he was feeling for Tavington. This had gone beyond bringing death for a personal reason of vengeance. This bordered on insanity.

Benjamin could see sudden fear come into the man's eyes, making them much wider and brighter than before, and it pleased him. It pleased him greatly. He could also see that although the man bled from cuts that certainly must have been painful, that the man's member was harder than ever by the look of it, weeping yet again, and it almost pulsed at Benjamin in a bid for immoral attention.

"You're enjoying this," he snarled, and the knife came down thumping into the mattress just beside Tavington's hip.

"Yesssss," he hissed, as his eyes focused on Benjamin's. "Enjoyment has many forms I learned as a young boy. It has been many, many years since I've been in a position such as this, but mark my words Benjamin Martin, you can do nothing to me that hasn't already been done or I have not done to another."

"We'll see," he growled and slammed an empty whiskey bottle into the side of the man's head to knock him out.

Unpredictable and underestimated, once again.


CHAPTER 3

Tavington awoke to feeling that now familiar blade, but this time it was on his back. He had been turned over, tied, of course, and a pillow had been placed under his hips.

He laughed out loud, knowing for sure now that Martin would weaken and succumb to taking him. -- Why else would he lift my ass at this angle?- - This would just be another type of pain he had learned to endure as a boy. He would survive. That's not, however, to say that Tavington wasn't infuriated that he would be meant to take it in this way when he had spent his entire adulthood being the one to inflict it on others. It was simply a matter of knowing that he could. - Besides, - he seethed inside, -- one day I will come upon Martin unaware, and on that day it will be ME holding that knife! --

More gasps of pain came; that bloody knife was cutting into his back and shoulders. -- Bugger that hurts! -- he cried in his mind, as he clenched his teeth to endure it like a man.

Benjamin kept right on going, although he was beginning to be distracted by the long silky hair that kept getting in his way. A part of him wanted to run his fingers through it, smell it, and knowing what he wanted inflamed him even more. This was something, though, that he could easily take care of. In one slice the temptation was removed and tossed onto the floor.

Tavington just laughed. Hair would grow back, assuming he lived.

"Stop laughing!" Benjamin screamed in fury and jumped from the bed.

I .. I . I," he stammered through laughter into the mattress, "can't help it! You're not a man, Martin! A real man would have tired of bleeding me by now, would have tired of the straining in his own trousers and taken what he wanted." And his eyes moved up to stare pointedly at that large straining at near eye level, showing Martin that it wasn't about to be ignored by both men in the room.

"I may not be a man anymore," Benjamin's voice lowered dangerously, "but I was never a monster like you."

"I'd rather be a monster than a pathetic excuse for a man!"

Surprisingly, the blue eyes cleared suddenly through the alchohol and furor. "I know what you're doing."

"And what would that be Oh Wise One since I'M the one tied up and can't do much of anything?"

"You're trying to goad me," he sneered. "You think that if I just explode, take out my anger on you in one fell swoop, it'll drain me in some way and I'll let you live. Or, maybe, you think I'll make a mistake when I'm out of control and you'll find a way to free yourself."

-- Damn farmer's smarter than he looks! -- Tavington thought bitterly and looked away.

"LOOK AT ME!" Benjamin bellowed and grabbed what was left of the hair on the back of Tavington's head to force the face towards him. "You were right," he rumbled right in his ear with lips that did not quite touch the man. "You ARE my devil, and I'm going to exorcise you out of me right now."

"I'm looking forward to it," Tavington replied quite dryly. -- Amazing, other than a couple slaps, a brief strangling, scooping up drops of blood and cutting my hair, the man hasn't really directly touched me yet with his hands. Impressive willpower.. until now ... --

Before he even had a chance to finish his thoughts, Benjamin was upon him, his trousers open just enough to press, with only a quick spit of lubrication on himself, his thickly engorged member into the tight orifice, an act he had not carried out on a man in decades.

Tavington's teeth ripped into the mattress beneath him to keep from screaming out loud. Every muscle on his body went taunt, fighting the intrusion, although his mind begged him to push aside the agony and relax, to loosen just enough so that the inevitable violation could be taken better.

Unfortunately, his body wouldn't listen to his mind. He bucked and thrashed and lost control for the first time since finding himself tied. Ropes were pulled so hard it was a miracle he didn't break the thick wooden posts in half in his desperation to free himself from the man's slow punishing advance into him.

Benjamin barely noticed.

He was drenched in perspiration and felt little but the heat enveloping him inch by inch by the exquisite tightness of the beautiful body around him. Beautiful body or not, as he thought, he remained careful to keep his own body away from Tavington's as much as possible. And, to that end, his hands stayed firmly planted on the mattress on each side of the man's back, safe from further temptation. Benjamin wasn't about to make this act any more intimate than it already was.

Once fully sheathed, he thrusted, soon moving harder and faster, as snorts of air blasted out of his flaring nostrils turned upwards to the ceiling and his teeth bit into the inside of his bottom lip, deliberately. Yes, his most hated enemy aroused him, and he hated himself for it, but Benjamin Martin would be damned if he'd let the man know just how much he thoroughly enjoyed the act of fornication with him.

He wasn't the only one that enjoyed the act now.

Tavington had stopped struggling and turned limp. The agony had receded just enough so that he finally felt the beginnings of that unmistakable pleasure he had learned as a youngster. His own member had already known it would. It had never lost it's arousal, even through the blinding pain, and now it pushed down into the pillow in more than just a response to being forced in that direction by the strength of the man above him. Tavington was searching for his own release. If he could, it would be a victory over Martin, a victory to show the man that he wasn't able to truly harm him after all.

-- It will be like laughing in his face, -- he thought gleefully, something he planned to do literally as soon as he was able to actually get face to face with the man.

And once he decided this, that he would relent completely and enjoy what he could, Tavington hit his stride. His groin rubbed against the pillow in just the right way, Martin abused his prostate in just the right way, and he was ready, ready and willing to let it ALLLL out. Not only did he gush beneath himself, he howled with pleasure, long and loud. The damn Colonial was truly a perfect fit once the initial pain diminished, and he wanted Martin to know just that; that William Tavington wasn't the kind of man that could be broken by a buggering, no matter how savagely it was done like this one.

His howl of rapture brought about Benjamin's own release of torment. Fireworks shot off in the sky outside the window, lighting up the room, and Benjamin frantically pushed as deep as he could to drain himself into his enemy. In a single bite of all-consuming joy, his teeth pierced clean through the inner skin of his lip, blood ran down his throat, and he opened his mouth to howl his own cry of ecstasy to the heavens, or hell, depending on his ever-changing viewpoint.

It was music to Tavington's ears. Not only had he broken the man into performing a sexual act that he normally held in revulsion, he even got him to lose control and show the true extent of his feeling for it. The fireworks were second rate compared to what he had just made Martin do. And he knew Martin knew that.

It was the tenth anniversary of the country's freedom, and although Benjamin should have felt gratified with vengeance at what he had done to his personal sworn enemy, an enemy of his country, all he felt was disgust now, disgust with himself. He had allowed Tavington, a monster, to win after all, and Benjamin couldn't abide it.

A flash of silver in the shimmering lights came towards Tavington's head, and he knew the war was lost, that Martin was ready to end it now, forever. He didn't want to die, as wretched as his life had become. And he would never go easily to meet his maker for his crimes, especially for the only crime he truly regretted, the murder of the boy named Thomas Martin. And with those final thoughts, he did the only thing he could to save his life, and, possibly, his soul. For the first time in his adult life, William Tavington apologized.

Strangely, the words came easier than he ever would have expected, probably because he really did mean it. "Benjamin," he rushed out at seeing the knife descending to his throat, as he deliberately used the man's first name for once, "I'm sorry for Thomas."

The knife stopped in midair, only inches from the defenseless neck of the man it was about to slit open from ear to ear.

Benjamin hadn't even withdrawn himself yet. He remained propped up over Tavington on one forearm, and he lowered his face to the back of Tavington's head. "What did you say?"

The man being asked stared at the knife, poised to strike, and knew if he said one wrong word this time it would be over. Tavington was a pusher by nature, and he knew that. He enjoyed pushing people to see what would happen, but he was no fool. He understood full well this time that he would never see another day if he pushed this particular man at this particular moment. He knew he was absolutely about to die. There was no doubt about it.

"I said, Benjamin," he tried desperately to control the tone of his voice to sound sincere, not too hard to do when a deep down part of him actually was, "that I'm sorry for Thomas. Gabriel was a soldier at war, a man. Thomas was a boy, like mine. I was wrong."

A sudden shuffling noise of air expelled onto the back of his neck. Warm air that had been held in washed over him, and Tavington shivered with delight, not just that it had worked, that Martin would let him live, but from a delectable tremor caused by the highly stimulating breath of this certain man on his bare skin, so stimulating, in fact, that he seriously wanted a joining of flesh with him again, although in a very different way.

Benjamin was convinced he didn't want a joining of any kind ever again with a man, especially THIS man. He would simply pretend it never happened and go on with his lonely life, the way he had dealt with it before. Denial, denial, denial. And with that determination coursing through him, strength found at hearing Tavington apologize and hearing the ring of sincerity within it, he pushed back his own desire at feeling the man's muscles clenching around him, hardening him again in that sweet perfect embrace .. and withdrew.

For a second, as he watched him put down the knife and lace his trousers back up, Tavington thought that was it, that Martin would just walk out.

But he didn't.

Tavington's head had just turned back towards the headboard, biting his lip in disappointment to keep from asking the man to untie him, to stay with him, to ... anything, when he suddenly shouted in pain, "BLOODY BASTARD!"

Benjamin was carving much deeper into his flesh than he had done previously. The flesh on his left buttock felt like it was being torn apart piece by piece by that knife, and it felt like an eternity to Tavington, a man who had never suffered torture quite like this before.

Apparently, he had been wrong.

There was, indeed, something Martin could do to him that he had never experienced or even performed on someone in this way. He was being marked ... permanently. And while he cursed explosively in fury at realizing what was being done, Benjamin just grinned a bit until he was satisfied, then wiped the blade on his trousers like before, cut one cconstricted hand loose and left the room without a single word.

Tavington didn't bother yelling after the man. He wouldn't lower himself to do it. Cursing while he was being cut that deep was one thing, but threatening a man who had just done it while he was still defenseless seemed not only foolish, but a waste of breath ... and dignity.

Within minutes he untied himself and stood up on shaky legs to look in the dresser mirror. Yes, there was a mark all right; a very large, very deep M on his ass, a mark that would eventually scar brilliantly, just like Benjamin had known it would. And not just there, he realized with a start. There were smaller ones he hadn't expected to see. High on his shoulders, one on each, he saw two smaller less deeply cut Ms, obviously in meaning for the two whelps he had killed. -- Well, now I know why he cut my hair! --

It was actually hysterical to Tavington. He couldn't quite work up a rage on it anymore like he had thought he would. He ended up laughing, and tears actually fell from his eyes in laughter when he bent over holding his knees and saw that his long locks of hair were missing from the floor .. that the bloody farmer had taken them with him.

CRACK CRACK Something hit lightly on the window, a miracle he could hear it over the fireworks still going off. But it was a different kind of sound, and it caught the room's sole occupant's ears even through his hysteria.

Wiping the tears of hilarity from his face, he walked over to the window, still very much bare-skinned and not caring in the least, and saw Benjamin standing in the street beneath the tavern in a crowd of revelers under the lit up sky. The man was actually smiling, broadly, and his hat tipped to Tavington while his other hand slowly waved in obvious taunt one of those annoying little red, white and blue flags .. the flags people seemed to make everywhere to wave about on their little insidious holiday.

The sight of it taunting him infuriated him even more than everything that had been done to his body, even the massive marking of possession. This lowly man was mocking him utterly with his stupid little flag and his stupid national pride that he had wrested out of Tavington's grasp a decade ago .. and it was the final bloody straw. The laughter within disappeared entirely. Tavington WOULD get even ... even if it took him his whole life to attain the goal. He had a purpose now. Benjamin Martin would be his, inside and out, completely.

Benjamin didn't feel any fear looking up at Tavington's dark expression. He saw how the chiseled face had set itself in stone and the eyes had filled with fury to blaze down onto him with a careful nod back, and he didn't care in the least. He knew Tavington would find him some day. It was inevitable. His mind could deny it all it wanted, but his soul knew their lives were entwined .. in more ways than one. So let the man come. They would fight. They would bleed ... and then they would see what happens.

And with that almost feeling of anticipation, a sense of new life entering his old bones, he turned from the window and melted into the crowd to enjoy his first Fourth of July celebration in years. It had turned out to be the perfect holiday after all.


~*~ FINIS ~*~