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It’s happened again.
Guts knows because he wakes in the tower room: the highest point in the castle, far from the eyes and ears of bustling servants and prying courtiers. Its narrow windows command views of all Falconia, a city from a fairytale stretching out silver and white and glittering almost to the horizon.
Not that Guts can see them right now. His arm is chained to the wall, low enough down that he can’t get to his feet in more than a cramped, awkward crouch. After a moment he quits trying and sinks onto his bare knees. He’s naked, but there’s a feather mattress underneath him, a warm blanket folded at his side. Probably he oughta be grateful for small mercies, but instead he feels the same stupid, formless resentment he always does when Griffith coddles him too much.
That’s just like him, ain’t it? Can’t appreciate a good thing when it’s under his nose.
Huh. Where did that thought come from? Guts has had a total of one good thing in his life, ever, and he wouldn’t walk away from Griffith even if he could. Even if Griffith weren’t the one thing that keeps the monster inside him leashed instead of rampaging through the city, leaving a trail of carnage in its wake.
The faint tap-tap of footsteps on the staircase captures his attention: a single bright point on which to focus the tangled mess of his thoughts. Only one other person ever comes up here, but his shoulders tense anyway as he recognises Griffith’s gait and his nerves sing in anticipation and dismay. He doesn’t really wanna know what he did this time, but waiting to find out is at least as bad. Story of his life: What the fuck is wrong with me?
The lock clicks and the door swings open. Guts stays where he is, gaze fixed on his knees.
Griffith’s voice, like always, is gentler than he’s braced for. “Good, you’re awake. I’m afraid you had to be restrained quite forcefully.” A beat. “Won’t you look at me?”
Guts raises his eye, at last. Griffith’s holding a cloth-wrapped parcel, which he sets down on the low table near the door. He crosses the room to stand over Guts, smooth and pale as ivory, a graven image above an altar. Before Guts can look away again, Griffith catches him with two fingers under his chin and holds him there, looking down into him without judgement. His understanding is soft and bright and all-encompassing, a fire that doesn’t burn as it consumes, but only warms.
Moments like this, Guts can see why people worship him. It wasn’t always that way—Guts remembers snooty nobles looking down their noses at the both of them, remembers Griffith throwing buckets of water over him and laughing his ass off like he was five years old—but sometimes it feels as though it’s never been any different, as though Griffith was a god-king and a saviour from the moment the world was born.
“Do you remember what happened?” Griffith asks him.
Guts shakes his head. “Last thing I remember is… there was a tournament?” His voice sounds dull and creaky. How long was he out?
He has a vague recollection of sitting in the royal box in the castle grounds, watching the duellists and grumbling that he hadn’t been allowed to take part. Of Griffith glancing around to ensure they weren’t being observed before squeezing his hand and saying, “It would hardly be fair to the others.”
One of the competitors was a scrawny blond kid with a permanent, sleepy smirk plastered on his face. He was good, though: fast and clever. Guts remembers wondering what he'd be like to fight, remembers catching the kid’s eye across the field, and then…
No, that’s all. Everything after is red mist.
Griffith sighs and thumbs along his cheekbone. Guts feels himself lean instinctively into the touch and Griffith gives him a faint, fleeting smile and lets his hand drop. “It’s my fault,” he says. “I should have known better than to expose you to bloodshed, even in a controlled environment.”
“That ain’t it,” Guts protests. “C’mon, I was a soldier.” Years on the battlefield and he never lost control of himself the way he does now. That only started… well, he's not sure exactly when, same as he isn't sure how he lost his arm or got his right eye gouged out, or why Casca and the rest of the Hawks left. His memory is as much of a shitshow as the rest of his mind. It was definitely after the war. That's about as precise as he can get.
Griffith crouches, putting them eye-to-eye, as he unfastens the cuff keeping Guts' arm chained to the wall. He’s in simple breeches, a loose white shirt that exposes a pale triangle of chest. The creepy red pendant he used to wear, always sitting right in that spot, is absent. Guts wonders when he stopped wearing it and can't remember that, either.
“No? If it wasn’t the fighting that set you off, then what was it?”
Guts’ shoulders sag. “Hell if I know.” He rotates his wrist to get the feeling back, keeping his focus on his hand instead of Griffith.
To think, for a while Guts had convinced himself the shit Gambino used to say about him being cursed was a lie. But the beast that lives inside him was only biding its time. Now it springs out and takes hold of him at unpredictable moments, striking out in mindless destructiveness at anything within reach. If not for Griffith, he might’ve lost himself to it a long time ago.
Griffith studies his face. “You're not ready to go back yet.”
Guts snorts. “You think anybody else down there wants to see me?” Griffith hasn’t told him yet how many he injured, or worse. That’s not a good sign. “Maybe you oughta just throw away the key.”
“There are some who’d have me do that,” Griffith muses. “But I’m not in the business of giving up, especially not on you. And I have an idea.” His eyes brighten and his lips curve with mischief, a rare, old look that makes the years fall away and even Guts feel fifteen again, young and whole and the curse barely a whisper in the back of his mind.
He isn’t expecting the kiss. He startles at Griffith’s fingers sliding through his hair, fingernails scratching gently at his scalp; at the soft press of Griffith’s lips. These kinds of touches belong to the privacy of night, to the bedchamber downstairs where Griffith fucks him so slowly and sweetly that Donovan is barely even a flicker in the depths of his memory and sometimes he even sleeps afterward. Not to times like this.
His confusion only makes Griffith smile and kiss him again, deep and searching and then a soft final peck of lips, like a signature at the end of a royal decree, just as Guts gets it together to reciprocate.
“Patience,” Griffith says—all low and conspiratorial, as if they’re sharing a joke—and he rises to his feet.
He shrugs off his shirt as he crosses to the door and tosses it to the floor, exposing the unmarred alabaster white of his arms. He used to have scars there, once, fine jagged ones where he'd dug in his fingernails—but medicine is a lot better now. Every surgeon and apothecary for a hundred miles around wants to ply their trade in Falconia. No wonder Griffith found someone to heal them.
Shame there's no such thing as a doctor for a broken mind.
By the time Griffith returns, parcel in hand, he’s shimmied out of his breeches, too. He sinks to his knees on the mattress, close enough for Guts to feel his body heat but not to touch. “I know you wish you could control it,” he says. “So, I thought we might try something to help with that. Control.”
“Yeah?” Guts hates the uncertain waver in his voice. “What’s that?”
Griffith’s smile stays soft, but his gaze sharpens. There's something rapacious in it, and for reasons Guts can’t fathom, he grits his teeth against a wave of fear. He tamps it down angrily. If he can’t get a hold of himself alone in a room with Griffith, there ain’t a shred of hope for him anywhere else.
“You trust me, don’t you?”
Answering a question with a question—that’s Griffith. Guts snorts, musters as much bravado as he can. “You really gotta ask?”
Griffith’s face is all sweetness again, now. “Hm, no. I suppose not.”
He shuffles close and kisses Guts again. This time he draws the kiss out, lets Guts sink into it, so he doesn’t even notice Griffith unwrapping the parcel until cold metal trails up his thigh.
He sucks in a startled breath against Griffith’s lips and looks down. “…The hell is that?”
The contraption Griffith’s holding looks like a bunch of metal rings all hung together, with a lock attached at one end. It’s only when Griffith holds it up that he registers the shape of the thing. You don't gotta be a genius to figure out what it's for.
They’ve been naked together more times than Guts can count, he’s had Griffith’s dick in his ass, but for some stupid reason this still makes him flush with embarrassment. To cover it, and the spike of adrenaline that's making him want to run a mile, he asks, “Where d’you even find something like that?”
Idly, as though petting an animal, Griffith’s free hand sneaks down to cup his balls, then trails teasing fingers along the shaft of his soft cock. And after losing his shit back there, getting off oughta be the last thing on Guts’ mind, but his traitorous dick gives a twitch of interest anyway.
Griffith puts his mouth to Guts’ ear. “Even the perfect city has its… seedier districts. There are merchants selling most things, if one knows where to look, and I make it my business to know most things.” He wraps his hand around the base of Guts’ cock and strokes more firmly, so the breath catches in Guts’ chest. “This, though, I had to have made to order. Most of the wares on offer weren’t big enough.”
It sounds like a compliment, a note of possessive hunger in Griffith’s voice, but the thought that somebody out there knows makes a flush of shame prickle at the back of Guts’ neck and creep over his whole body.
“Don’t fret,” Griffith murmurs, as though he’s plucked the thought straight outta Guts’ mind. “No merchant here would be foolish enough to tell.”
The worst part is, Guts can imagine it all—can imagine the smiling lightness with which Griffith must have made the order and the veiled threat beneath it. The silence after he took his leave and the feverish working of the merchant’s imagination. Guts never really goes out in public except at Griffith’s side. How hard could it be for someone to put two and two together?
He’s never given a crap if people think he’s rude, or dumb, or just the rabid attack dog Griffith points at his enemies. But this is a different kind of humiliation. It makes him squirm and shiver.
“Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks,” Griffith tells him. “You're not here to please them. But you'll please me, I know you will, and isn't that what matters?”
When he’s in this kinda demanding mood, there’s nothing to do but succumb to it, so that’s what Guts does: lets Griffith’s tongue probe into his mouth and Griffith’s lips trail wet kisses down his throat and Griffith’s hand keep up its steady, teasing strokes until his eye slides shut and his knees turn to liquid and he’s halfway to goddamn fairyland. He’s half-hard in Griffith’s soft palm and half-aware of what Griffith is whispering in his ear: his very own personal variety of praise that somehow manages to sound a little like a taunt and little like how you’d talk to a faithful hound. Something about showing restraint and something else about I know you can be good for me, and a lot of mine, mine, mine. It's a little unsettling, the full-bore force of Griffith's attention—a beam focused through glass until it burns—but there's a flicker of triumph in knowing he has it all, too. After all that time spent thinking he'd never be good enough...
A touch of cold metal makes him curse on a startled inhale. The sound of something clicking into place follows it.
When he looks down, his cock is caged in those shiny metal rings. Griffith runs his hand down the length. The brief, warm touch of his fingers as they dip between the rings makes Guts start, hips jerking forward.
“Ah-ah,” Griffith says. His tone is playful, but there’s a steely shine in his eyes. “We’re going to play a little game. We’re going to see if you can get off without my going anywhere near this.” One last stroke and his hand drops away.
Guts blinks at him. Takes a minute to muster up a sentence. “How’s that gonna happen? I can’t even… you know.” He gestures downward. Even if the cold metal hadn’t been enough to make him go soft, there’s no room inside the cage for his cock to do anything but hang there uselessly.
But Griffith only smiles and kisses him again, so tender that if Guts didn’t know better he’d think it was an apology. “There are ways,” he says. “And if they don’t work, we’ll try again tomorrow. I think you’ll learn to tolerate frustration soon enough. It’ll do wonders for your self-control.”
Griffith takes hold of his shoulders, tries to coax him onto his back, but Guts isn’t having it. “You mean you’re just gonna leave me like this?”
“Stop worrying, love. I always take care of you, don’t I?” Griffith strokes his face.
“…Yeah,” Guts admits, after a moment. This time he goes where he’s put, and Griffith settles between his spread thighs, gazing down at him with the small, satisfied smile of a king surveying his territory.
Well. That’s what Griffith is now, more or less. Why shouldn’t he look the part?
Griffith’s hand creeps lower, behind his balls, stroking at the sensitive skin there. Guts exhales shakily and tries to relax into the feather-light touches. He does trust Griffith, after all. He does, when he’s in his right mind.
And the black moods that take hold of him when he isn’t, when he lashes out at the one person willing to put up with him? Those are just the goddamn curse.
Griffith dips his head, presses his mouth to the lower part of Guts' belly and the insides of his thighs, until Guts isn’t thinking about curses anymore, isn’t thinking about anything but those molten, wet, open-mouthed kisses. Griffith always kisses him like he wants to devour him. Sometimes it’s a little terrifying, but that’s okay. He’d never been wanted like this before Griffith, not by anyone, so of course he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with it.
Griffith nips at his inner thigh—lightly, but enough to make Guts suck in a sharp breath. “You’re in your head,” Griffith tells him. “I thought I told you to stop worrying.”
“Yeah? Maybe I oughta tell you to quit teasin’.” His voice is too thick for the lightness of the words and it catches in his throat, making him swallow hard.
“For that, I should leave you here to ache.” Griffith smiles sweetly. “But I am a merciful king.”
His fingers are slick with oil—Guts didn’t even notice when that happened—and they slide along the cleft of his ass before pressing inside. He jolts at the sudden, inexorable pressure and the momentary burst of pain he still feels each time.
Griffith’s free hand pets his flank, as though soothing a skittish horse, as his fingers probe deeper, crooking forward and stroking at his sweet spot. He keeps it up for long minutes, until Guts' thighs tremble and his breath comes in short, stuttering gasps. A bead of sweat trickles down his neck, pools in the hollow of his throat. Right now, he'd normally be grabbing for his own cock, for some straightforward pleasure to take his mind off how exposed he feels like this—laid open, dissected. But all it can do is twitch helplessly in its cage, a thin dribble of precome trickling down the shaft. The moan that escapes him is pitiful, really more of a kicked-dog whine, and Guts grits his teeth to silence himself.
He must be a goddamn pathetic sight, but Griffith gazes down at him with so much pride it brightens his eyes like a fever.
“Look at you,” he murmurs. “You were a firestorm out there, deadly and beautiful, and now I get to hold you in my hands. You have no idea what you do to me.”
It’s messed up, Griffith saying this kinda shit to him when he’s a danger to everyone around them, but still Guts flushes so hard his ears burn. “Make you wanna recite sappy poetry instead of fucking?”
Griffith laughs in delight. “Well,” he says, “since you insist,” and he slides his fingers out.
Guts doesn’t even get a chance to catch his breath before Griffith replaces them with his cock, pushing in right to the hilt. Always takes him a minute to get used to this part, for the old, instinctual flutter of panic in his chest to subside. Usually, Griffith gives him all the time he needs—takes it slow, strokes his face and whispers his name so there’s no imagining he’s anywhere else, with anyone else.
But today, he sets a frantic pace. The breath punches out of Guts’ lungs. His cock still strains uselessly in its cage but he doesn’t even try to touch himself, just clutches at the blanket with his one hand and squeezes his eye closed.
“Look at me.” Griffith says sharply, and Guts obeys. Of course he obeys.
Griffith smiles. He's a waterfall of light, warm and enveloping. Guts is full of him, surrounded by him, drowning in him. He doesn’t think he’d know how to be anything but Griffith’s if he tried. He takes deep, shaky inhales and tries to let himself go with it, the slick slide of Griffith's cock inside him and the slow-building pressure that makes him think he might pop open like a grape just from the force of Griffith's gaze.
Griffith presses a butterfly kiss to the tip of his nose and follows it up with a vicious thrust of his hips. “You’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you?” he says, full of wonder, and somehow that’s what sends Guts over the edge.
It’s weird as hell feeling an orgasm pulse out of him without even being hard—and intense, leaving him wrung-out and gasping. Griffith doesn’t let up even for a second, keeps fucking him hard and fast. It’s too much, it’s all too much, and he sucks in one hiccupping breath that doesn’t quite turn into a sob before Griffith jerks and spills inside him.
Even that, the wet warm rush of it, is too fucking much. For a brief second Guts feels that he’s floated out of his body, that he’s somewhere above the tower room looking down on the castle and the city, and the vertiginous drop and the hard, sparkling whiteness of the landscape fill him with dizzy nausea.
It’s only a second. Then Griffith’s lips are against his ear, whispering love and mine and good, and then on his mouth, and sweet, familiar kisses tug him back down to earth.
Later, when they’ve cleaned up and Griffith’s half-dressed again, Guts lies on his back and stares at the ceiling. He still feels kinda blurry, head swimming, half-conscious of Griffith moving around the room. He's aware of the curse again now, a pitch-dark angry thing shifting in the depths of him, but it’s very far away. If he tries, he can almost pretend it's not there at all.
The mattress dips as Griffith sits beside him and something new brushes against his thigh. Soft and warm, this time.
He shuffles to prop himself up on his elbow. His eye goes wide when he sees what Griffith’s holding: a collar and leash of fine, creamy leather. The beast—the curse—gives a distant roar of outrage.
Guts swallows dryly. “The hell is that?”
Griffith has the grace to look apologetic, though there’s still a spark dancing behind his eyes. “If you want to leave this room,” he says. “I have to consider the rest of the court. Their sense of safety.” He caresses Guts’ cheek again. “It’s only a temporary measure. You’re doing so well already—I’m sure you’ll have it under control in no time.”
The coaxing warmth of his voice is a drug. Sometimes Guts thinks he’d agree to anything, he’d poke out his remaining eye and live the rest of his life in the dark if Griffith only asked.
But he thinks about all the eyes that watch them, every day; about the whole world knowing he’s not just Griffith’s soldier or his guard dog but a pet whining for caresses, and he can’t do it.
Griffith gives a resigned smile. “I understand.” He kisses Guts’ forehead and stands, stepping back out of range as Guts reaches for his hand. “But I do wish you’d come with me. I’ll miss sleeping next to you.”
###
The tower room isn’t cold. It’s always sunny in Falconia, and the nights are balmy. Guts still can’t sleep. He rolls onto one side and then the other, but his mind keeps on chasing its tail.
He shoulda gone with Griffith. He couldn’t stand it.
His rages are getting worse. How long before the curse swallows him whole?
Griffith always brings him back. He promises he’s always gonna be here and Guts believes him, so why the hell does he feel that pit of dread in his belly when he thinks about it? That feeling of something nagging at the edges of consciousness, the certainty that he could remember it if he concentrated hard enough, only he's not sure he wants to because he knows it's gonna be bad?
It's the curse. It's always there. He oughta be used to it by now. But it's always worse when Griffith ain't around.
Guts groans and sits up.
Then he freezes.
A faint glow radiates from the centre of the tower room and a ghostly figure stands at the centre of it. It’s a kid. A girl, maybe ten or eleven, in a pointy hat and flowing robes. Guts doesn’t know when he fell asleep, but he’s gotta be dreaming. He scrambles to pull the blanket up over his lap, then peers at her through the gloom.
The girl turns toward him and relief floods across her face. “There you are! Your presence was so faint, I started to wonder if…” She bites her lip, seems to draw herself up. “It doesn’t matter. Serpico got a good look at the castle and he thinks he spotted a way out, so..."
The girl breaks off as Guts stares at her in confusion. There’s something familiar about her, a vague itch in the back of his skull, but he can’t place her. “Kid,” he says, “I think you got into the wrong guy’s dream. I dunno what the hell you’re going on about.”
She blinks at him as if he's the one talking nonsense. “We’re going to get you out of here,” she says, half promise, half plea. “Out of the castle, away from him.”
At the words out of the castle, Guts feels a strange, longing tug in the centre of his chest. An ache like a half-remembered voice calling his name. He shoves it away with a scoff. “Even if I wanted to leave, I can’t,” he tells her. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’d do, if Griffith wasn't here.”
The girl opens her mouth in protest—but before she can get another word out, her image shivers and begins to fade. Her lips move, but he can’t hear what she’s saying.
Then she’s gone.
###
He tells Griffith about the dream when he comes by the next day. Guts isn't sure what he’s looking for. Reassurance? Absolution?
“Kinda recognised her, just not sure where from,” he says, and Griffith lowers his eyes, pats his hand.
“I prefer not to remind you of these things,” he says. “But…”
Guts sighs, a hollow pit opening inside him, already knowing what Griffith’s about to say. When he blinks, he gets a flash of the kid lying on the ground, her face smashed in like a half-eaten plum. “The curse. She’s somebody I hurt. Or…”
“Or.” A delicate pause. "I'm given to understand one of the competitors in the tournament was an associate of hers. Perhaps that's what set you off."
"Fuck."
Guts scrubs his hand down his face, but Griffith won’t let him look away. He cups Guts’ cheek and holds him there, keeping their gazes locked together. “I don’t think it’s good for you, being up here alone.” His voice drops, becomes a caress, irresistible. "Come with me. Please."
The girl’s bewildered stare. That awful, lurching feeling of something monstrous right on the edge of memory.
He closes his eye; leans, resigned, into Griffith’s touch. "Yeah," he whispers. "Okay."
“Nothing like that will ever happen again,” Griffith promises. He kisses the top of Guts' head, his forehead, each of his eyelids in turn. His throat. “I’ll keep you with me. I won’t let you lose yourself.”
As the collar settles into place around his neck, Guts tries very, very hard to believe it.