Amphictyonis
It happens in Delphi. A symposium, carefully curated. An invitation-only event nestled among whispering pines and quiet marble courtyards, where the wine flows as freely as the conversation, and ancient stones remember every secret.
Zemo is there by choice, not necessity. He’s not seeking alliances, only interesting company. He stands at the edge of a mosaic terrace, wineglass in hand, watching a pair of diplomats argue softly in French. He doesn’t intervene. He listens. He learns.
“Too much tannin in that bottle,” comes a voice beside him, smooth and warm like sunlight through garnet. “It tightens the tongue, rather than loosening it.”
Zemo turns. She is elegance distilled. Dark hair pinned in a style older than empire, eyes like the first press of autumn grapes. Her gown is simple, impeccably draped, and she wears no ornament except for a ring shaped like an amphora.
He smiles politely. “Some arguments require restraint.”
She considers that, swirling her own glass. “Others benefit from indulgence.”
He nods, intrigued. “Helmut Zemo.”
“I know,” she replies, tipping her glass toward him. “Amphictyonis.”
There’s a pause. Just enough for the name to settle between them. Amphictyonis. Goddess of wine, conviviality, friendship between nations, and internationalism.
Zemo’s brow lifts faintly, then smooths again. He bows his head, and says, “I’m honoured.”
“And I,” she replies, “am curious.”
He gives a small, careful laugh. “That’s rarely a safe thing to be around me.”
“Perhaps,” she muses, “but curiosity is the root of diplomacy, is it not? And war. And invention. And pleasure.”
Zemo tilts his head. “You’ve missed revenge.”
“Deliberately,” she says, with a smile like old vineyards under moonlight. “I find it a sour vintage.”
Their glasses clink, soft and resonant.
The evening folds open slowly from there. They drift from terrace to table, from topic to topic: treaties long lost to time, empires that fell for lack of understanding, the art of the subtle pause in speech. She speaks with the patience of millennia, he replies with the wit of a man who’s been both the soldier and the strategist.
She pours the next glass. He accepts it without question.
*
The night deepens, and the stars over Delphi sharpen, each one a quiet observer to the gathering below. The music has softened into something orchestral and intimate, barely brushing the edge of hearing. Zemo and Amphictyonis have moved to a quieter table, stone, weathered, half-hidden by olive branches and bathed in amber lamplight.
She leans forward, elbow on the table, chin in her hand. “Tell me, Helmut, do you think humanity is addicted to conflict?”
He smiles without showing teeth. “No more than the gods.”
A pause, rich and deliberate. Her laughter is low, delighted, like the first sip of a particularly fine vintage. “Touché.”
Zemo runs a fingertip along the rim of his glass. “We crave purpose. Some find it in harmony. Some in struggle. Some,” his eyes flick toward her “in both.”
She raises her glass to that, but does not drink. “And you?”
“I find purpose,” he says quietly, “in the shape of things. How they fit. How they shift. How people can speak without saying a word, and mean everything.”
“Mmm. A tactician of souls.”
“An observer of them.”
“Even better,” she murmurs.
They lapse into silence, the kind that holds its own conversation. Around them, laughter rises from another table, and somewhere, someone recites a fragment of Sappho in a voice thick with wine and longing. The night is wrapped in gold and old magic.
“You don’t flirt like a mortal,” she says after a while.
“I don’t flirt at all,” Zemo replies smoothly. “I simply say what I mean. And if meaning is attractive, well.”
She studies him with wine-dark eyes. “It is.”
He inclines his head slightly. “Then I’m glad.”
She sets her glass down. “Stay, after the others leave. We’ll open something older. Something rarer.”
Zemo’s smile curves, just a little. “I thought you didn’t indulge in sour vintages.”
“And I thought,” she says, rising from her seat with the effortless grace of a diplomat and deity combined, “you didn’t flirt.”
He stands too, offering his arm. “We both seem to be adjusting our assumptions.”
“And that,” she says as they disappear into the darker corridors of the symposium, “is how peace is brokered.”
*
The cork makes a soft sigh, as if the bottle has been waiting centuries for this moment. Amphictyonis holds it reverently, its surface etched with vines that shimmer faintly under the torchlight. No label, no year, no symbol.
They’ve slipped away from Delphi, though it’s hard to say exactly when. The walls around them shift as though in dream: frescoes of clasped hands, offerings of olives and honey, libations shared between kings. Her realm is not one place, but all places where peace has ever been toasted.
The couches are low and soft. The goblets are wide. The wine is divine.
Zemo laughs, freely, richly, head tipped back, the sound deep and rare. His hair falls slightly out of place and he doesn’t fix it. His cheeks are flushed and his accent is a little thicker, curling around his words like smoke around the stem of a glass. “This is illegal, surely,” he says, holding up his drink. “Too smooth. Too seductive.”
She lounges beside him, swirling her own with practiced ease. “You mortals always assume seduction comes with artifice. Sometimes it’s just truth at the right temperature.”
He grins at her, loose-limbed and radiant. “That’s a very diplomatic answer.”
“I am the goddess of diplomacy.”
Zemo considers this. Then whispers throatily “That’s cheating.”
She shifts closer, watching the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles. “You don’t mind.”
“No,” he smiles, lazily. “No, I really don’t.”
Their fingers brush as they reach for the fig plate at the same time. She lets her hand linger. He doesn’t pull away. His pulse thrums like a drumline beneath skin gone gold from the candlelight.
“Helmut,” she says softly, tasting the name like a rare spice, “has anyone ever toasted to you?”
He blinks. “Not often.”
“Then let this be the first.”
She raises her glass. He mirrors her, solemn now.
“To the man who makes peace feel like seduction. And seduction feel like an honest negotiation.”
They drink. And in the silence that follows, Zemo shifts toward her, wine-bold and half-dreaming. His voice is a murmur. “You know,” he says, “I’ve studied treaties that lasted less time than it’s taken for me to fall under your spell.”
She smiles. “I make better terms.”
“And your wine doesn’t stain.”
She leans in, brushing his cheek with her lips like a signature at the bottom of a pact. “It only marks those who wish to be remembered.”
Zemo turns, slow and sure, eyes half-lidded. Their mouths meet, not as a declaration of conquest, but a seal of agreement, a sigh shared between equals. He tastes of dark berries and warm spice and midnight sun.
When she lays him down among silk cushions and laurel-scented air, he’s weightless in her hands. A man at rest, beautifully undone, starlit and dream-drunk.
*
Zemo is lounging sideways now, half-reclined on a sea of pillows the colour of dusk, one leg elegantly bent, the other trailing lazily off the side. He’s barefoot, jacket long discarded, sleeves folded to the elbow. The collar of his shirt is open in that particular way that suggests seduction wasn’t the goal, just a happy consequence.
Amphictyonis watches him from across the low table, chin resting on her palm, the shadows of vine-laced torches dancing over her golden skin. The fig plate lies ravaged between them. One olive pit remains, and Zemo picks it up with absurd care, turning it like it holds ancient wisdom.
“Do you know,” he says, wine-thick voice curling in the air like a melody, “there was once a diplomat in the courts of Saxony who believed olive pits could predict the weather.”
Amphictyonis raises an eyebrow. “And?”
“He died in a storm.”
She laughs. He beams.
“That’s awful,” she says, still laughing.
“I never said it was a good story.” He tilts his head and gestures vaguely with the pit. “But a memorable one, no?”
“You remember everything, don’t you?”
He shrugs one shoulder, then tips his glass toward her. “Only the beautiful things.”
“Then I hope I’m among them.”
“You,” he says with mock-severity, “are going to be a whole chapter.”
Her smile softens. The wine, rich and heady, has made him glow. Not just flushed with drink, but open, delighted, easy in his body. When she reaches across the table to brush her fingers against the back of his hand, he turns his palm to hold them.
“Will you stay the night?” she asks, voice low and luxurious.
Zemo rolls onto his back dramatically, one arm thrown over his head. He sighs. “If you’d asked me to build a diplomatic bridge from here to Olympus with nothing but poetry and charm, I would have tried. Staying the night is hardly a test.”
She crawls over to him, settling beside his long frame. Her fingers find the hollow just beneath his jaw, where his heartbeat pulses gently under soft skin. “Then stay longer,” she whispers. “Until the moon forgets it was ever alone in the sky.”
He hums in response, content and drowsy, the sound of a man utterly at peace. “Your metaphors,” he murmurs, “are dangerously good.”
“I’ve had practice.”
“So have I,” he murmurs, turning his head toward her. “But not like this. Never like this.”
They don’t need more words after that. He tangles one hand lazily in her hair, the other rests on the curve of her waist. There’s no urgency to their closeness, just the warm, slow press of skin against skin. Fingers brushing. Breaths syncing.
Later, he dozes, limbs splayed like a prince in exile who finally found a place to rest. Amphictyonis traces her name into the dip above his heart with one finger, then leans in to kiss the place. “I will remember this,” she whispers, half to herself.
Zemo, eyes still closed, smiles a little. “Good,” he murmurs. “Someone should.”
*
He wakes in stages, as if the sun is coaxing him back from some dream-drenched sea. The light is syrupy, golden, as though filtered through honey and hanging grapes. It glows across the white linen sheets tangled beneath them, kisses the line of Amphictyonis’ shoulder where it emerges from the covers.
Zemo breathes her in before he even opens his eyes: myrrh and ripe plum, sun-warmed skin and some impossible spice that doesn’t exist in any mortal market. He sighs, eyes still closed, one leg slipping over hers as he turns. He is entirely unclothed. So is she. And still, it feels more like being wrapped in poetry than anything scandalous.
His voice is velvet rough, still drowsy, still wine-soft. “I had the strangest dream,” he murmurs. “You were a goddess. And I was remarkably witty.”
Amphictyonis chuckles, turning her face toward him on the pillow. “It was no dream.”
He cracks open one eye, just enough to look at her, hair spilling across the sheets like spilled ink. “I am remarkably witty?”
She kisses the corner of his mouth. “You’re also delightfully tipsy.”
Zemo considers this, then stretches like a cat, arms over his head, spine arched. “Maybe I’m just finally relaxed. You wouldn’t believe how much tension is stored in well-tailored shoulders.”
“You haven’t worn a shirt in two days.”
He beams. “You’re welcome.”
She laughs again, her fingers drifting lazily across his ribs. He catches one of her hands, presses a kiss to the palm, then rests it over his heart, where it rises and falls, slow and unhurried.
“I’m quite sure I should feel concerned about this,” he says. “About waking up this happy. It’s suspicious.”
“You’ve been fed, adored, and well-plied with nectar.” Her voice is a smile. “The world has not ended.”
“It might have.” He glances around the sun-drenched chamber with theatrical suspicion “Have you checked?”
She rolls to her side and slides a lazy leg across his. “You’d miss it if it had?”
He hums, thoughtful. “Only certain parts.”
“Anyone in particular?”
“Hmm.” He leans in close, lips brushing her ear. “There’s a man who makes terrible coffee and even worse small talk. And I miss him with every cell of my ridiculous mortal body.”
Her hand curls against his chest.
“But,” he adds, pulling back, “not now. Not yet.”
She smiles. Not possessively. Not sadly. Just fully. “Then stay. Just a little longer.”
Zemo kisses her, slow and deep and sweet like they have all the time in the world. And, maybe here, they do.
And when they eventually rise, it’s to silk robes and silver trays, laughter echoing through sunlit colonnades. Zemo eats grapes one by one, trailing stories in his wake, making Amphictyonis laugh until she’s breathless.
And yes, perhaps he’s always a little tipsy in her realm. But so is the world around them: drunk on beauty, on affection, on the kind of love that asks nothing and gives everything.
*
The table is set beneath an olive tree older than any known empire. Its roots twist through marble, its leaves catching the sun like gossip. Cicadas sing in the distance. The air smells of crushed thyme, roasted figs, and the bright green bite of fresh-pressed olive oil.
Zemo lounges, of course, not merely seated. Reclining like an old-world aristocrat with his robe loose and artfully draped, one arm flung over the carved back of a wide stone bench. The goblet in his hand gleams like rubies. The wine within has no name in any mortal tongue, but it tastes like the last note of a string quartet, the pause before a lover speaks.
Amphictyonis reclines beside him, radiant and languid. She peels fruit with elegant, idle hands - a pomegranate seed here, a slice of apricot there - feeding him in between bites of her own. They’ve stopped pretending he’s not spoiled. She rather enjoys it.
“You mortals,” she says, reaching for a fig soaked in honey. “You pretend at decadence, but you don’t commit. You call a sip indulgent and a second one sin. Here, we know better.”
Zemo smiles lazily, eyes half-lidded. “Mmm. And what lesson am I currently being taught, dear goddess?”
She traces a finger along his collarbone. “How not to rush pleasure.”
He laughs, warm and smooth. “I believe I am an excellent student.”
“You are,” she says, and kisses the corner of his mouth with fig-sweet lips.
The food never runs out. Neither does the wine. Trays appear and vanish like well-timed conversation partners: grilled peaches, lavender cheese, cold minted cucumbers, flaky pastries with pistachio and rose. Zemo narrates each bite with mock seriousness. “I may defect to your pantheon,” he muses, finishing a tart of some divine berry he can’t quite name. “You don’t happen to need a wine diplomat, do you?”
She arches a brow. “Wine diplomat?”
“Ambassador of flavour. Peace broker via cheese. Minister of flirtation and rare vintages.” He lifts his goblet. “I bring offerings, make toasts, seduce enemy states into friendship. It’s a role I invented just now, but you must admit, it rather suits me.”
She tips her glass to his. “To my new minister.”
They clink. They drink.
Later, when the sun leans low and the plates have been cleared away by unseen hands, Zemo props his chin in one palm and says, with the utmost sincerity, “If you told me this was all a trap, I wouldn’t even mind.”
Amphictyonis smiles, soft now. “No trap. Only time stolen back.”
He tilts his head. “Stolen from whom?”
“From the world. From your duty. From yourself.”
He leans back again, basking in the shade, eyes slipping shut. “Then I surrender, unequivocally.”
She reaches for his hand. They sit like that in the hush of the garden. Just a man and a goddess in the long gold of afternoon. No war. No vengeance. Only wine and warmth and the peace between words.
*
The chocolate arrives in a bowl of onyx, liquid indulgence that never solidifies. It glistens dark and sinful, more silk than sauce, perfumed faintly with orange blossom and cardamom. Amphictyonis dips a spoon in, then lifts it slowly, letting the drizzle fall like ribbon onto a plate already scattered with slivers of candied pear and violet petals.
Zemo hums as he watches, pupils dilated, mouth slightly parted. “You’re trying to kill me.”
“I’m seducing you,” she corrects, spooning a drop onto his lower lip. “You’re the one who said you surrendered.”
He doesn’t answer, just closes his lips around the taste. And moans, just a little.
She raises one brow. “That good?”
Zemo dips a finger in next. “Better.” He traces a slow, lazy line across her collarbone, and then leans in to kiss it clean.
The shift happens quickly, inevitably. Dessert is forgotten, save as a tool of slow, sensual warfare. She paints a curve of chocolate across his stomach, a streak beneath his jaw. He swipes a thumb across the swell of her breast and licks it off with deliberate reverence. The marble grows warm beneath them, heated by the low amber sun, their bodies tangling together in a rhythm older than language.
Zemo laughs, breathless, somewhere between kisses. “You’re very persuasive.”
“I’m a goddess of diplomacy,” she replies, rolling her hips in a way that makes him gasp. “Of course I am.”
Later, they lie in a sated, sticky sprawl. A grapevine curls lazily above them. Birds sing somewhere in the trees, drunk on fermented fruit.
Zemo is bare, blissed out, chocolate-smeared. He is draped across a velvet chaise like a Renaissance muse. Amphictyonis feeds him the last bite of apricot, her fingers grazing the corner of his mouth.
That’s when Bucky walks up the garden path.
Sunset turns the air molten behind him. His boots are dusty. His hair is tousled. There’s a smear of oil on his arm and the glint of metal at his shoulder. He pauses when he sees them, folds his arms across his chest, one brow raised, but the amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth gives him away.
Zemo’s head snaps up, and his eyes light like a firework. “James!”
He leaps to his feet, utterly naked, still glowing from wine and worship, and stumbles a bit as he throws his arms around Bucky.
Bucky catches him, hands settling instinctively against his waist, steady and familiar. “You’re sticky,” he says, deadpan.
“You love me sticky.”
“I do,” Bucky murmurs, pressing a kiss to Zemo’s forehead. “God, but I do.”
Amphictyonis rises behind them, every inch the gracious hostess. Her eyes gleam with the glint of mischief as she watches them. “He’s yours again,” she says, voice like a toast. “Though I warn you, he’s acquired a taste for pleasure.”
“I noticed,” Bucky replies with a grin, stealing a long, appreciative look at the scene he’s stumbled into. “What was in that wine?”
She laughs, producing a slender crystal bottle and handing it to him. She winks, and whispers “In the mortal world, you’ll only need a sherry glass full. No more.”
Zemo, still wrapped around him, breathes into his neck, “I stole two bottles.”
Bucky snorts. “Of course you did.”
The goddess bows, and the garden fades behind them. All that lingers is the taste of wine and the scent of apricots, carried on the breeze as the lovers step back into the mortal world, tipsy, tangled, and utterly content.
*
The apartment smells like lemon polish and clean laundry. The windows are flung open to let in the spring breeze, and Bucky is barefoot, sleeves pushed up, trying not to burn the risotto.
Zemo pads in from the bedroom with a towel around his neck and nothing else but an air of smug satisfaction. He looks scandalously relaxed. His hair is damp, his step unhurried, and one of those bottles is tucked casually beneath his arm like it’s olive oil from the corner market.
“I thought we were saving that,” Bucky says without turning.
“We are,” Zemo replies, placing it on the counter with exaggerated reverence. “For tonight.”
Bucky pauses. He eyes the label: there isn’t one. The glass seems to shimmer a little in the light, like it’s holding the last gleam of sunset.
“Amphictyonis herself bottled it for me.” Zemo leans over, kisses the back of Bucky’s neck, then hums in his ear: “A sherry glass, she said. No more.”
Bucky smirks, glancing at him sidelong. “So naturally you’re going to pour us wine tumblers.”
“Of course. I’m not made of restraint.”
The first sip is ridiculous. Sun-drenched orchards. Laughter through a canopy of vines. The curve of someone’s shoulder glistening with honeyed sweat.
Bucky blinks. “That’s not wine. That’s sex in a glass.”
Zemo tilts his head, pleased. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
The second sip loosens something. Not their minds, exactly, but their inhibitions. Bucky starts humming along to some old song on the record player. Zemo dances barefoot on the kitchen tiles, spinning dramatically like he’s at a gala. They make it halfway through dinner before Zemo’s in Bucky’s lap, hand-feeding him stolen pieces of toasted bread and licking crumbs from the corner of his mouth.
“I don’t think this is how risotto is meant to be eaten,” Bucky mumbles, dazed and delighted.
“I don’t think we’re mortals at all anymore,” Zemo replies, nuzzling his neck. “We’ve been ruined by wine and gods.”
Later, the dishes are forgotten. Clothes are thrown haphazardly over chairs. They’re curled up together on the couch, cheeks pink from laughter and affection. The half empty bottle glows faintly on the windowsill.
“You’re a menace like this,” Bucky murmurs, fingers tracing idle patterns on Zemo’s thigh. “Too too charming. I’ll have to watch you at parties.”
Zemo smiles, eyes closed. “You never do.”
“I do. Always.” Bucky presses a kiss to his temple. “You just don’t notice.”
Zemo hums into his chest, then lifts his head and grins wickedly, eyes shining. “There’s another bottle in the sock drawer, when we finish this one.”
Bucky laughs so hard he almost drops his wineglass.
*
The wineglass dangles from Zemo’s hand, the stem looped carelessly between two fingers. It catches the lamplight like a secret, glowing amber. His head rests against Bucky’s shoulder, and he hums something tuneless under his breath, content, low, like a cat in the sun.
Bucky runs a thumb across Zemo’s knuckles. “That second bottle’s not happening tonight, is it.”
“No,” Zemo sighs, eyes barely open. “It’s nice knowing it’s there, though.”
They breathe together. The kind of breathing that says: we are not rushing toward anything. The kind that takes up space like it’s earned. The record’s long stopped playing, but neither of them moves to flip it. The silence is music enough.
Zemo tips his head up to look at him, cheeks flushed, a smile half-formed. “I don’t usually let myself get like this.”
“I know,” Bucky says softly.
“It’s just…” Zemo gestures vaguely. “You. The wine. The day. Everything.”
Bucky shifts just enough to wrap his arm tighter around Zemo’s waist. “You’re allowed to be happy, you know.”
Zemo lets out a small, contented noise and nuzzles into Bucky’s chest. “I know. That’s the terrifying part.”
They don’t talk much after that. At some point, the wineglass is set on the table with surprising delicacy. Zemo’s legs tangle with Bucky’s; his breath slows. Bucky presses a kiss to his temple, lets it lingers there.
The city hums faintly outside, distant cars, a breeze through branches, someone laughing three stories down.
But inside, it’s still. Wrapped in each other. A couch that somehow fits them perfectly, a half-empty bottle glowing faintly, a night with nowhere to be but here.
Bucky brushes his nose against Zemo’s hair and whispers, “Sleep, mein Herz.”
Zemo doesn’t answer.
*
The sun rises slowly, slanting through gauzy curtains in streaks of honey. The apartment is quiet, save for the occasional creak of old floorboards and the soft gurgle of the coffee machine doing its holy work in the kitchen.
Zemo stirs. Barefoot, blanket half-kicked to the floor, curls mussed and a cushion crease trailing down one cheek. He blinks into the light like it offends him personally, then sniffs the air. “Mmmmm… is that… coffee?”
He sits up, slowly, reluctantly, like a prince awakened from some enchanted sleep. The couch still holds the warmth of their shared night. His robe, Bucky’s, technically, has slid down to one elbow, baring a shoulder kissed pink by the sunrise.
In the kitchen, Bucky is humming. Out of tune. Shirtless. Hair sticking up like a thunderstorm passed through it in the night.
Zemo leans against the doorway, arms folded, the ghost of a smirk tugging at his lips. “You look like a man who fought a bear in his dreams.”
Bucky turns, coffee in hand. “You look like the bear won.”
Zemo accepts the mug without protest, and their fingers brush. “It was a very convincing bear,” he murmurs, sipping carefully. He makes a pleased noise, low, content. “You remembered how I like it.”
“I always remember how you like it,” Bucky says, stepping closer. “Especially when you’re tipsy enough to whisper it like a confession.”
Zemo arches a brow, pleased but pretending not to be. “And what other secrets did I divulge?”
“Plenty,” Bucky says, kissing the corner of his mouth. “But I’ll keep them all safe.”
They stand there for a while, warm mugs in their hands, stealing little touches like they’re not already allowed them. Zemo leans into Bucky’s chest, eyes drifting closed again. The smell of coffee, the scratch of stubble, the soft hum of a city that hasn’t quite woken up, it all folds around him like another blanket.
“I could get used to this,” Zemo says softly.
Bucky kisses his cheek. “Good. Because I’ve already made plans for lunch. And dessert.”
Zemo tilts his head up. “Chocolate and apricots?”
“And maybe,” Bucky whispers, brushing his lips just barely over Zemo’s, “a little wine.”
Zemo smiles against his mouth. “You spoil me.”
“You’re very easy to spoil,” Bucky says. “Especially when you’re warm and soft and tangled up in my robe.”
He takes Zemo’s empty mug, sets it on the counter, and draws him back into an embrace. The morning presses on outside their windows, indifferent and endless. But here. Here is slow and sacred and sweet. And neither of them is in a rush to let it go.
***