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"I come to beg forgiveness."
Jack didn't, really. No after his father had tried to coerce him into getting an innocent, good man sentenced to death, then called him a traitor for breaking under the injustice and saying the truth and... Well, outing him by calling him a faggot on live television. Not that that earlier hiss of what a disgrace he was had been scrubbed from his mind. It was all wrong and rotten and he was only biding his time to depose the tyrant.
So he shouldered on as he was waved closer, telling himself that he was done with all this and it couldn't hurt him anymore.
"Forgiveness is a form of love and I do not love you."
I did still hurt. Fuck. Even his mother muttered "Silas..." behind him. And in a whiplash of emotions that he had denied, he responded without conscious thought:
"Yes, you do."
But only silence answered him and a raised brow. ...And the bitter recognition that he didn't even know if it that was true. His father had certainly not been very loving to him in... since he could remember. And the bitter-most recognition would be that his claim was actually just a demand. Less than that, a plea. Because he was not over it. He still wanted his father to love him. Wanted to be true, what he didn't know he could even still believe.
"Kneel."
What? Hard eyes captured his own. He must have misheard, right? But his father only took a sip from his glass, stared at Jack and reminded him and everyone else watching them of who he was. He was king. And anyone else, including his own flesh and blood, was a subject to his will:
"Kneeel."
It sounded almost indulgent now, all drawn out, and there was no way that he had misheard it this time. But what had his uncle said when he had told him that his mother had begged him a pardon? Good, be angry. But a king must also learn the value of humility. Jack didn't believe that humility and humiliation were synonyms. And this definitely felt more like the latter.
But he had known that something would happen, hadn't he? His father had already made him cast aside the only person who had ever truly seen him and loved him anyway. And Joseph had killed himself because of them. So Jack had known, his uncle had known, anyone would have. But this was necessary. It was an opportunity; all it would take was a little pain. And how bad could swallowing his pride be after he had already swallowed his heart?
Jack knelt. He didn't go easy, grinding his jaws as he fought down the tears and the urge scream at his father, scream what kind of father would do this to his own child, all of it. Scream what he had done so wrong to deserve such hatred from his own father. When he had always tried so hard to do right by him...
And at last his father set down his champagne and leaned forth, icy eyes overshadowed by dark brows coming closer as he leaned forth until there was barely any air between them anymore and certainly none for Jack to breathe when he heard those next words:
"Now kiss the ground I walk on."
Faintly he heard his mother hiss his father's name again, but it was mostly drowned out by the disbelief chipping and chinking like a worn down dam as it failed to hold his devastation at bay. Then, with a tone that almost sounded teasing in its own sadistic way, came the flood as it broke:
"Your mouth's been in dirtier places."
His own father... He should have died as a soldier. He should have died in combat or as a prisoner of war, it didn't even matter anymore. It mattered less then the burning gazes. They were literally right on front of everyone... Of his mom as she stood there doing nothing, his sister, her new boyfriend, his own beard fiancée as elected by his mother after getting the one he had chosen himself and found an arrangement with killed... all the staff, random guards and people he had known since before he had learned to speak and walk...
This was not humility and it was certainly more than a little pain. (But what else was he supposed to do? He had nothing else left.) So he fought himself the entire way, but he bent down, trying not to claw at the ground and kissed the panelling before his father's shoes.
He was still fighting, still shaking, as he slowly rose again to kneel upright. He didn't eben dare to meet his father's eyes when he noted those deep little pits scanning him. He only dared to look below him, flittering betwen corners of that hard face that haunted him and plead in his mind. Where had he taken the wrong turn? When had his fate been sealed as this?! Had he even made a wrong choice that he should regret for the rest of his life? Or was the mistake being born?
And was this finally enough? The king evaluated him, contemplated him. He was certainly more king than father now. No father could do this. But what king would, either? Not even in privacy where it could stay, safe behind closed doors, within the family, a united front. No, this king would humiliate his own prince and alleged heir before their people. ...As long as this was now enough? (No.)
"Strip."
...He could have misheard it, please?
"I-"
"You don't deserve the honor of your uniform."
Or not. Maybe he just didn't know his father enough. (When he really should have. And kicked himself for not expecting it.) So, trying not to tremble, he took it off; his belt, the jacket; but he hesiated. His pants, too? He looked up into his father's eyes without meaning to, needed permission to stand up. Because he had to, to take off the rest. And his father knew that exactly. And smirked as he leaned back, picked up his champagne once more and waved his permission like a dismissal.
Jack's face burned, but he was certainly not dismissed. (Only his value.) He stood and took off the rest of his uniform, folding it as if there were not more than a dozen people staring at him. Some in pity, some without. His fiancée barely hiding how she wanted to see more, even under these circumstances with his whole family ri-
"All of it."
He didn't believe in mishearing anymore, his father was evidently capable of anything, sipping from his glass over his queen's muttered curse. But Jack had only an undershirt, his underwear...
"We clothed you, did we not? Everything you have, everything you ever had, came from our mercy. And that has run out."
No one else said anything at all. All he could do was to blink rapidly against the tears, of humiliation, of anger, of despair... It just all crashed together as he stripped naked in the open, airy room, right under his father's scrutinizing gaze. A wave of the hand and he was back on his knees. Was THIS enough now? But his father still didn't look pleased. Of course not. Experience showed that there was nothing Jack could do that would please his father. Nothing at all...
The king just sipped his champagne and looked at him like bug at his feet. Or a maggot. Perhaps he wondered how he could ever have confused a maggot such as this for a caterpillar capable of rising as a butterfly of Gilboa. Or maybe he had never confused anything and just grown tired of veiling his hatred. And his disgust.
"Show them. What you are."
...He dreaded to even ask, but what was being expected of him now? Even at his worst he looked to his father for help and the king set down his emptied glass, absently waved for it to be filled again and leaned back into Jack's face, breathing alcohol at him and yet not nearly enough of it for Jack to pretend that this was all to blame on something as distorting as intoxication, that it was not just exactly who his father was:
"You will bare your secrets, open yourself up and show everyone here just what you really are."
O-open himself? It wasn't real. It couldn't be. Just a little pain, right?! It had to be fake. The whole day was a delusion. And he was only going through the motions. It was the only way to stay sane. No thinking, no feeling, just motion. One hand behind himself as he held himself against the ground with the other, to stabilize as he leaned forth. Ultimately he just laid his face on his forearm on the ground at his father's feet, making himself small while he spread his knees to better reach what he was ordered to do.
He just didn't think or feel. His face was stone (but for the tears). And he did not consider as his own fingers found his hole whether he should be even more humiliated at the residue slick inside him from trying to fuck his nervous frustration out in the safehouse bathroom or just relieved that he was less likely to make himself bleed. Because if he thought about it, he would have to hate himself more for more mistakes. Because he would have preferred the blood.
Because this way, it just had to look craven and lecherous, cowering before his father with two fingers in his own ass, pulling his wetly glistening hole apart. But he didn't think. Not about that or anything. So he couldn't question why he really did this to himself. Was it even worth the crown? What would even happen if he stopped?
His father might slit his throat for what he had already done. ...Which might be better than this. But knowing his father, he might also do worse.
Jack didn't want to know what this worse would be. He couldn't think of anything he still had to lose, but his king had a much better imagination. His king had thought of this, after all. And his king, father, pulled his hiding head up by his hair and tsked at him for his tears.
"Is this not what you are, what you would give my people for a king? No... you were never worthy of my crown. But even this is not the extent of your depravity, is it?"
A part of him wanted to laugh at the irony, or scream - this wasn't born from his depravity, but his accusers - and yet it just succumbed into a choked-off sob. He didn't meet his father's stinging eyes. Not that he could see much through the water in his own as it was. But he could hear one thing. Something familiar. A rrrtsh he had heard often enough before... And his fingers and breath and his very heart froze in understanding even before the smell of his father's now released manhood could reach him.
"Don't waver now, Jack, you must have done this countless times before. Or does the prince serve only other fags and refuse to serve his king?"
It was a test. One that he was meant to fail. Or just the peak of his humiliation. His father didn't even seem to be hard... (Thank God for that?) Perhaps the king just wanted to prove that he was nothing like Jack. That he was firmly above such 'depravity'. Or he meant to force Jack to swallow ...something other than come to mark his disgust.
Whichever way this could go, it would only become worse and yet as soon as one sharp eyebrow arched, Jack was leaning forward. His father in turn leaned back, still fully clothed but for his open fly, took the hand from Jack's hair at laid it on his armrest as the other picked up his freshly refilled glass of champagne. A picture of decadence.
But he couldn't think about that. He just reached his free hand out to ...it as he resumed fingering himself open and flinched back from another clack of his father's tongue. There was no need for words now. He leaned forward and sucked the soft piece of flesh into his mouth without the use of his hands. But the words came anyway:
"Put it to better use presenting your vileness, unless you can't even do that."
He nodded, trying not to taste, and hooked the first two fingers of both hands into his hole to pull it open. It hurt now, the remainder of the lube drying in the cold air. But he didn't feel beyond the physical, didn't taste the cherry lipstick on his father's dick or think about how it reminded him of the kind his mother liked to wear. He just went through the motions.
For once, that almost worked. Because he was familiar with this, practiced and seasoned in the mechanics. Enough to disappear into it. To focus only on the veins he found and followed with his tongue until they twitched and pumped, on the length of the shaft he squeezed within the tightening ring of his lips and the spongey head at the back of his throat. The more he was tempted to remember that this was his father, that the very weight on his tongue had once created him, the more he fled into concentrating only on his actions. No implications, just skill.
And he was skilled in this. Joseph had taught him that it could be good to receive, too. That sex was not just a power play, but a give and take and that there was pleasure of making someone happy. But no, he couldn't think about that. So he brought his head and neck in line as soon as it felt stiff anough - his king having hardened in his mouth, but he wouldn't think about that - and pushed himself forth on the nameless flesh to spear his own throat and bury everything there was in his own body.
When he could do that, he didn't have to think about his audience. But he also couldn't forget who he was doing this on anymore when he heard a gasp in his father's voice. And even with all his desperate focus and determination on moving back and forth with a viselike vaccuum, squeezing and sucking as surely and unerringly strongly as an engine, his eyes still snapped up.
It wasn't real. Couldn't be. How his father looked at him. But this time it was not because he didn't want it to be. This time it couldn't be real because he did want it to be. And he couldn't bear that false hope again. Because now... his father looked at him in new light. He looked like... like he never had before.... like he was... seeing Jack. As if finally they had found a skill he had that could genuinely please his father...
Jack no longer had to fight within himself to ignore the many eyes on him. They just ceased to exist. Nothing else existed beside this barest hint of positive surprise, of true appreciation in his father's eyes. He craved it like a moth craved the flame. But moths were lepidopterans as well. By their order, their blood, they were butterflies. (So he could be, too?)
Nothing else seemed to matter anymore as he only threw himself into his performance, vindictively thrilled to see the surprise, to possibly outdo his mother in pleasing his father this way - in thanks for the 'pardon' she had supposedly begged for him. And he only had to remember them once, when his father order him up on his lap and to turn around so that he couldn't hide his face anymore.
Facing the room was clearly a punishment. Seeing the stone-faced staff trying in vain to hide the churning of their stomachs, his sister looking away with tears in her eyes and a hand over her mouth, her boyfriend frozen in terror... seeing his mother glance at the proud, wet dick he had just released before her eyes settled back on his father, her cheeks red... But at least she wasn't as obvious as his own fiancée, with her legs tightly crossed and a throw pillow on her skirt to cover the secret revealed by her flush and lust-blown eyes. She would take anything she got of him, wouldn't she?
Jack hated her more for that. He hated his sister for moving on so easily from the man she had allegedly loved and yet not defended like Jack had, only to be accused at his side and end up like this. And he hated his mother for never caring about her own children even a fraction as much as she cared about her monstrous husband. (And of course, he hated himself for every stupid mistake he had ever committed, the list too long to name, but starting with error of his birth.) And yet... he couldn't hate his father now.
Even humiliated, subjugated and shamed, even crying out as his father's cock breached him with only spit and a dried out illusion of lube... even after everything he burned with the cursed hope to finally know something he could do well enough for his father. He was, through every jabbing thrust and slap against his side to spur him into bouncing better, still drawn to please the light he knew to be his undoing.
But he knew the vanity of that hope and it flickered with the fear to disppoint again. The fear that this would just be like every other time. That he would only ever be the disgrace. So he shoved himself down faster, clamped down harder, shifted and rode the raw hardness in him on shivering thighs. It hurt. The friction was too dry. He might tear something. Probably. But why would he care about a 'little pain'?
All he ever wanted was to prove himself. And if that could be done by milking his father as the older man gasped and breathed harder, then he would seize the one chance he got and reap it for all it was worth.
When his father shoved him away, he landed hard on his hands and knees, but he also felt the hot splatter of come over his ass and back nearly up to his neck. So he only turned, knelt better and stared at his father like a shark that had smelled blood. (And swallowed down his fear of failure as he would have readily swallowed his father's come.)
"How else may I serve my king?"
...He shouldn't have expected to be welcome at the ceremony anymore. Not naked and hard and painted with his father's come and, yes, some of his own blood. But the ceremony was an uncomfortable place anyway, after he gave up his uncle's plans for that spark of hope.
A hope that still lived on the bewildered contemplation in his father's eyes. A hope that clung by long sharpened claws when his father confirmed that he something like him could never be king. A hope that struggled to survive his father's words:
"This is the second time your mother's given you life. It'll be the last."
But even then the hope lived, burning in the middle of the flame that was his king, when he received new rooms, right next to his father's. It was torn in its burning when his father's gift for his wedding was the warning that he needed to produce an heir and a harness for his wife with a cast-metal cock that looked exactly like his father's.
And it burned him so brightly when his father summoned him at night to serve his king. Finally he had emerged from his cocoon. Not quite a monarch butterfly, but close enough to be looked upon by his king as having value. Close enough to be granted a crown of pearls to wear as everything he was burned away.