Chapter Text
They pass through the woods like shadows. Thin foliage sifts enough moonlight in, but Hans still stumbles. A twig snaps. Henry treads like a poacher, no sound but the clink of his armour and squeaks of leather. In the damp, moss-tinged air, their breaths come out in pale huffs. There are owls overhead and frogs in the reeds to the north.
Henry took off his gauntlet, which Hans now carries under his arm. Their hands swing between them, bare skin tingling. Clasped tight. A man's not meant to feel this way, not after a certain age and not when he can no longer count his bed companions on his fingers, but Hans does, and dares anyone — fate or God — to tell him he can’t.
With a hiss, Mutt pisses on a pile of leaves. Hans darts a look over his shoulder.
“It’s pure idiocy to walk without a light, I’ve told—”
“Hush,” Henry says. “Bandits everywhere. I’m not fighting bandits tonight.”
There are none. Today’s night proves life doesn’t always cheat — the conviction is tepid as a drink of honeyed milk before bed, warm in Hans’s chest. It’s a good night; it’s the reason there is any night.
Hans never asked how Henry convinced Bozena to let them have the hut for these few days. Maybe she knows. Maybe she knows and left anyway; maybe she offered to leave. A dangerous thought for all involved. On a night like this, might as well believe it.
“What are you thinking about?” Henry asks, barely above the wind, pressing his thumb to Hans’s wrist.
“You.”
“Not much further.”
“Is it not? You’ve said the same an hour ago.”
Henry’s cuirass rattles when he laughs. Mutt raises his snout, sniffling, then trots forward, as if urging them on. Looks like the beast has some sense after all. But Henry stops. He peers up, and Hans follows; the moon swells, bladed-over with a silver streak of a cloud. Cold metal nudges Hans in the waist and he takes a step back, then another, feet sinking into moss as Henry pushes him off the beaten path.
“What are you—”
“Hush.”
Before Henry leans in, Hans glimpses his smile. He wants to eat it off his face, wear it like a badge.
Henry crowds him against a tree and drags his nose up Hans’s jawline.
“Fuck,” Henry sighs into his ear, and Hans’s knees forget everything they’ve been taught about honour and noblemen.
Henry’s breath skates Hans’s face, shivery on the exhale when he runs a finger down Hans’s nape and dips it underneath the collar.
“I want you,” Henry says, a warm brush on Hans’s cheek.
“I have it on good— authority — that we’re — ah — not far.”
“Too far.”
Henry’s mouth moves up to Hans’s temple as tangles into his hair, arches his head up and into the coarse bark. Protests cut short, Hans grips for purchase, both hands full, unable to touch back as Henry sucks on his neck.
There are no bandits tonight. There’s the spicy-stale smell of undergrowth and earthy soap in Henry’s hair. There’s a bat beating its wings, and a boar nosing through the dirt, and the rustle, rustle, rustle of leaves as Henry thrusts his knee between Hans’s legs. Most of all, there’s a good chance Hans will never again be able to go on a hunt without melting or getting hard.
Of course, that’s when Mutt growls and bites at his ankle.
“Ouch!” Hans jerks up, kicking, and kicking once more when Henry slaps a hand over his mouth, shoulders clanging with laughter.
“Stop it, you silly doggy.”
“Silly doggy? Silly doggy? The beast bit me!”
“He’s saying we should go, and he’s right.”
“It’s not saying anything. It’s a dog. And it bit me.”
“Maybe he wants to eat you,” Henry says, and leans back, tugging Hans upright with him. He straightens Hans’s collar. “Fair is fair.”
“I gave him my last dried deer.”
“I bet you taste better. Maybe he’d share with me.”
Hans shrugs off his hand, steps over a bush, and shuffles forward in what he hopes is the right direction. He does not think about being eaten by Henry, or crawling inside his chest — or being safe, or held, or happy.
***
Bozena does know, if the state of the cabin is anything to go by. Logs have been placed by the fire, ready for kindling — and freshly baked bread on the able, and more furs and blankets than a woman of Bozena’s stance ought to own. She’s tucked flowers into a ceramic vase, dried bluebells with their heads frozen upright. By it, another vase of water-downed wine.
Apparently, father Godwin knows, too. One, twice, Henry turns in his hand a flask he fished out of his pocket having started the fire.
“He said I should regift it to the lady of mine,” Henry says. “And I thought he meant it, he had that face on he does when he’s talking about… such things. But then he hugged me and said to be careful, and that he’d seen a badly timed comment put someone on the pyre— And then he threw up on my shoes. What should we… do about that?”
“Use it, I suppose.”
“You know what I mean.”
It’s one thing for Bozena to assume, when it’s just as likely that she didn’t and was simply trying to repay the silver. It’s quite different for a friend. It means they haven’t been cautious enough. A warning, like Mutt’s bark. And yet it comes softened with forgiveness. Forgiveness from someone who is, as much of a mockery as he makes it, close to God.
The fire cracks. Hans used to stare into the flames as a child and imagine all kinds of mystical, fantastical words — but nothing as strange or grand as his life is now.
“For one,” Hans says, “you could stop looking at me like you want to bend me over the table all the time. We could start with that.”
“What, like this?” Henry asks and — making a face like he’s at the privy — takes the wine tankard out of Hans’s hand, and crouches where Hans sat down cross-legged on the fur spread out in front of the fire, calves to Hans’s knees.
“I thought you were starting a tough conversation.”
“Me too. Guess I lost track.”
“Very foolish of you.” Hans unclasps the belt of Henry’s sole gauntlet, slides it off and sets it on the ground with a clank. “But not as foolish as running your mouth when you could put it to better use.”
“Charming.”
“I know, I’m—” Hans hisses through his teeth when Henry uses the newly gained dexterity of both hands to turn the muscles in Hans’s back to pudding. The doublet gone and forgotten, his sides heave under Hans’s cold palms.
“Three days.” Henry smiles, a glint in his eyes, brighter than the orange hue catching on his armour. “Three days I’ve got you for. How long can you last without sleep?”
“Not three days, you madman, not even if we take a walk to freshen—
“You won’t be able to walk.”
Hans shudders, air thinning in his chest, bleeding out through his nose a in sharp burst as Henry climbs over him and presses him to the floor. He aims to recover, but Henry’s hands are on the lacing of his shirt, and Henry’s mouth is on his neck again. He lays back —done for and conquered. Temporarily.
“Christ Almighty,” he gasps out when Henry leans in to brush their noses together, his breath damp on Hans’s parted mouth. “Where’s my monk friend now?”
Henry kisses Hans’s lower lip — chaste and softer than soft. “You’d be surprised with the books I’ve found at the monastery.”
“Re—ally?”
“No, not really.” Another kiss, and another, mouth closed, savouring. Hans feels like a feast laid out, a repast. “But you look good scandalised.”
“I think I’ve got the right to be scandalised, considering the sodomy we are—”
“Shut up. Tell me again how I look at you,” Henry says and flicks his tongue into the corner of Hans’s mouth.
“Like you’ve taken leave of your senses, just now. Would you hurry this u—”
Henry yanks Hans’s hands away from his chest and pins them above his head, looming with a sharp smile.
“You’re the mad one,” he says, “if you think we shouldn’t take our time. Three days, Capon. Why the rush?”
The rush is the heat in Hans’s groin. It’s the need to have Henry closer, tangibly and for real— have him entirely. The need is the ache of almost possible, but never quite.
Henry just squeezes his hands when he thrashes; Hans will need to reevaluate the stab of pleasure at a better time.
“Like I want to bend you over the table, that’s what you said. Maybe. Sometimes. Truly, I just want you to be mine.”
Henry talks more now than when they first met, and maybe Hans shouldn’t have encouraged it so much. Not when Henry wields it like a sword, the tip of it scratching up Hans’s jugular with an edge of teeth and a hot, wet tongue soothing the hurt.
“I want everyone to know,” Henry says into his ear. Fire bathes the inside of Hans’s eyelids the shade of Henry’s cheeks. “I want you to know. To remember. When she touches you. Or— anyone else.”
“No one else. You know I— Please, don’t talk about—”
“Three days. Any time after. In between, if we must. You can have her any way you want, but she’ll never have you like this. You should see yourself, how you look all spread out. I’ll have you now. Any way. All the ways.”
Hans’s abdomen caves in, soft and sore, a breath could stab it open. Like everywhere Henry touches him, everywhere he looks at. The haze clouds his head, thick — acrid. He’s never had to have this fight, and he can’t go down without it. He bares his throat, hooks his legs around Henry’s to bring him close, wills his frozen hands to break the hold and touch. They can’t.
“Bold of you to—”
“No time to be coy.” Henry works the lacings of his tunic loose, tie after tie. “I already courted you for months.”
“When was that? When your fist was in my face, or when you failed to obey any—”
“Yes. Now tell me you’re mine.”
“I hardly think you need more convincing,” Hans says, half-there to return the strength of Henry’s gaze, but his eyes stick together at the heat, the touch.
“Not me I need convinced.” When Henry says need, his confidence slips. A crack in armour — instead of striking it, Hans kisses it closed with a shared sigh in Henry’s mouth.
“You’ll remember how I touch you. How it feels. I’ll remember. Hans— This will burn short, it has to burn bright. I have to— I want to leave a mark. I want to have you. Make you dirty, so much you can never wash it off. Make you scream. Make you cry.”
There’s a wobble in his lip. There’s sweat beading on his forehead, the armour too heavy in the damp warmth of the hut. Panic laces the heat in his eyes. Another crack.
The vices give, and Hans’s hands break free — a pair of shoulder plates clatters to the floor. Henry doesn’t struggle, not when Hans undoes the breastplates straps, not when he lifts it over his head, not when he tears off the plackart.
“You forget yourself,” he says, chases the blush down Henry’s chest, tousles his hair and bends him over an arm until Henry has to look up. “I’m no icon, and you’re no bandit tainting it with mud. You don’t make me.”
“I want to.” Henry’s eyes dip, his voice follows. “You want to. You need to learn how you want to. And remember.”
Damn him all the way to hell, Hans does. Instead of keening, he bites down at the crook of Henry’s neck, salty and sweet. He licks up.
“As far as semantics go, there’s only one answer as to who’s owning. My page. My guard. My boy.”
“It’s why.”
Henry shudders. A wild jerk, and on the tail of it a wilder kiss. It feels like the first time. Always. Like the last time. Hans’s mouth burns — slick, owned, fighting a duel he’s no intention of losing, no will of winning. Henry pants into his lips, hands clawing at his back, then his arse.
“You don’t need to give it easily,” Henry says, meek and hollowing, like his touch. “But I must have you. Fuck me, if you wish. That’s yours, has been for a while. I’m just—”
Hans plants his hand on either side of Henry’s face and cuts his words short. They sway like that, both on their knees, neither giving in; the push makes Hans weak. He knows what he wants. What his cock wants. Curse it, his heart. The weight of Henry, his stupid prattle, his devotion, the hunger sated yet growing. A grunt in his ear, a growl, rough palms catching on the skin of his thighs — he’s dreamt it. Dreamt it, but can’t give it, not to himself and not to Henry, not when he’s already weaker, lesser, fumbling—
“Win it, then,” Hans says, when the sweet pressure forces his eyes open.
“I— What?”
“Win it. I brought dice.”
Henry pants until it lifts into laughter. His grip softens, fingers climb up to Hans’s chin, tilt it. It’s worse, somehow.
Hans swallows it down. “Entertainment. I wager you forgot all about it, you caveman.”
“You want to bet on it. On who—”
“Takes the lead, yes.” Hans straightens up — his back and his thoughts, but not his mouth, which he forces to curl into a smirk. “Sticks what where, if you may. Unless, of course, you’re scared.”
Henry’s face contorts, then breaks open a smile so smug Hans instantly questions his plan. “Get the dice.”