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“Come on Henry, how long are we gonna drag this on?”
Henry has half a mind to say ‘forever’, tell him to fuck off. Run out of the room – he could, maybe if he wasn’t completely naked.
“I uh…” he mumbles, his clothes a messy bundle of fabric held against his chest, a last defence as he faces away from the tub. Away from Hans who, he’s very aware, is also naked.
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” Hans tuts at his back.
“It’s different!” Henry’s cheeks are too warm for the temperature of the room, flushed with blood like he’s been soaking in the scalding water for hours.
Hans sighs again. Henry can almost hear him scratching the back of his neck in thought. “Would… would it help if you got into the water first?”
Henry makes a face at his own feet. He is being particularly stupid. And Hans, particularly patient.
“No it’s… fine. Can we turn around at the same time?”
“All right. You can count.”
Henry pinches his eyes shut and lets his clothes fall to the floor, the rush of it obscene in the quiet of their private room.
“One, two, three…”
He lets his feet work for him and turn him around, hands immediately searching for the edge of the tub to steady himself. He meets Hans’ gaze and finds him confidently still.
“You were already looking,” Henry accuses.
The smirk that spreads Hans’ lips is enough of a reply and despite his – unexplainable – nerves, Henry joins him in smiling. He is being silly.
He ignores his own body for a while, an easy goal when Hans is standing just there, a simple tub of water between them. There have been times when much harder walls kept them apart and yet…
Henry breathes slowly as his eyes roam. Hans’ body is the same he touched a few nights ago, save for the new bandage wrapped around his shoulder, hiding a scar Henry can only imagine for now. He wishes they could be truly bare, that he could check for himself, kiss the frontier between Hans’ unhurt flesh and the memory of a day they will strive to forget.
It is, crucially, still Hans. More battered and bruised, deeper circles in his eyes. Cautious, now. And under that the same boy who invited Henry to his bath what feels like a lifetime ago, shared his water, his wine, his laughter. Made room for Henry until he forgot he had anywhere else to go.
“If you stare any longer the water’ll go cold,” Hans chastises, gentle.
Henry nods and hikes a leg over the edge. He stands, dumbly, water up to his upper thigh. Hans holds out a hand and Henry takes it like he would to lead a woman in a dance, helping him in. They hold each other in gazes of warmed blue while Henry brings himself to let go of those damned fingers.
They lower themselves into the water with beatific smiles.
“I thought we’d never make it this far,” Hans grins with his head thrown back, eyes closed.
“Oh fuck off,” Henry huffs back. “You had your moment the other day with your tale of knights, let me have mine.”
Hans’ expression mellows into something unbearably soft. “Aye, all right.”
Henry settles himself properly, arms stretched out on the rim of the tub, and allows himself a proper look. Since Hans cheated to stare at his backside earlier, he feels he is owed a little ogling too.
He’s always liked the line of Hans’ jaw, long before he understood why he was having those thoughts. The continuous slope of it evokes to Henry the hills of Skalitz and dozing off onto a bed of marigolds.
Hans is all angles and at first Henry thought him sharp, pointy. Biting. It took a few months and hardships to notice how those angles round into each other. How every bend of shoulder into neck, of hip into waist could be a landing place for his palm, his mouth.
He moves without thinking, this time, hands reaching underwater to find one of Hans’ feet. The other man’s eyes shoot open with a question in them.
“Pass me the soap?” Henry asks.
Hans twists over the edge, water licking down the thick swell of muscle that joins the front of his chest to his shoulder blade, honed by years of shooting a bow. When he places the soap into Henry’s hand with an unnecessarily slippery grope of Henry’s wrist, he laughs.
He lathers his hands and lifts Hans’ leg above the water, stopping short of placing his ankle over his own shoulder. He doesn’t feel quite so bold yet. Instead, he folds his own legs and rests Hans’ in the slight part between his knees.
He starts at the ankle, rubbing gentle circles into the skin. He studies the place where blond leg hair stops, gives way to slightly freckled skin before resuming, scattered, down the top of his foot.
Hans hums like he does when particularly expensive wine slides down his throat and Henry gulps around nothing too.
He pushes his fingers between Hans’ toes, pulling a groan that is half pain, half delight. When he digs his thumb into a tense sole, Hans jerks.
“That tickles, you bastard,” he protests without much force.
Henry does it again, again until Hans’ back is twisted and Henry has to grapple with him to keep his leg where he wants it. He relents with a soft pet of his hand down Hans’ shin. Finds he likes it there, and lingers, flutters his fingertips in a way that won’t wash anything.
He needs both hands to start massaging Hans’ calf, the muscle rock hard. Hans doesn’t push him back even as he shivers under the ministrations of his page.
“Henry,” he warns when his fingers reach the underside of his knee.
“Yes?”
“Careful.”
Henry bends further, mouth close to the top of Hans’ ankle now. “About?”
Hans pushes his leg into him and Henry goes willingly, until he’s pressed back into the tub, a foot squarely planted in the middle of his chest. Hans’ cheeks have reddened, his chest rising deep and fast.
“You didn’t stay shy for long,” he remarks, words coming out breathless.
Henry tightens his grip around that stupid, shapely leg. “I’m better at... doing than the rest.”
“Hmmm I know. Nary a word about my romantic declaration before you pounced on me like an animal.”
“Shut up. You liked it.”
“Maybe I also want to be wooed, you know.”
Henry smirks. “I haven’t saved your arse enough times yet?”
“Not like that,” Hans adds with another push of his toes against Henry’s pec.
Henry’s no poet, but he reckons he can come up with something. If his mouth won’t string pretty sentences for Hans to swoon to, he can still put it to good use.
He cradles Hans’ foot in one hand and steadies the rest of his leg with the other, grabbing his thigh a little harder than he needs to, just for the pretty flush across Hans’ cheeks to deepen. His mouth, he puts just above the coarse skin of the ankle, where the leather shoes rubs the hardest. Hans’ breathing deepens but his head is steady, eyes fixed on Henry.
Henry allows his gaze to do the talking. He maintains eye contact as he presses a kiss a little higher, soft enough that Hans’ leg hair tickles his lips. The room is quiet save for the crackle of fire and the gentle lapping of water when Henry scoots forward, bends Hans’ leg further towards him to get better access.
His next kiss is open-mouthed on his calf, a brief touch of tongue that doesn’t linger. This time, Hans’ jaw drops slightly. Henry hides his grin against his skin. They haven’t had time to learn each other’s bodies that way but he craves that new knowledge. Immediately, he makes note of the increasing sensitivity as he drags his kisses higher until he’s tonguing the back of Hans’ knee and finally, finally the other man’s back arches, pushing himself harder into Henry’s touch.
Henry smoothes his left palm up Hans’ leg, caressing and even, until he has a grip on his knee. He uses the traction to drag Hans down a little and revels in the gasp that gets him when Hans dips lower into the water, arms scrabbling for purchase on the tub behind him. Henry has to almost fold himself in half to keep reaching further up his leg, the motion now taking him down as he uses teeth on the inside of Hans’ thigh.
He has to push it nearly into his friend’s chest to bite the underside. Under the water, the outline of Hans’ cock fills and Henry groans his satisfaction into wet skin.
He isn’t surprised to find that Hans likes a little pain – they both live on the thrill of battle and wither in the quiet between. Henry wouldn’t mind a couple bite marks of his own. His crossed legs are now nearly under Hans’ backside, the plush flesh of his upper thighs rested on Henry’s knees.
He considers stopping but Hans has not opened his mouth to complain yet. If anything, his eyes have gone darker when Henry chances a look upward again, searching for approval. He finds it everywhere: in the wide pupils eating away the blue, the bitten lower lip, the heavy breathing.
With a pleased smirk, he releases Han’s leg into the water and gently pries the other one up.
“Fuck,” Hans exhales.
Henry replies with a hum as he resumes his sweet torment, this time starting low on Hans’ right thigh and retreating back towards his foot until he’s achieved perfect symmetry.
His own head runs hot and he can’t blame the bath, water already growing tepid around them. He still takes it as an excuse to place both Hans’ legs over his shoulders when he stops, running his hands over his friend’s shins and contemplating his handiwork.
“Like that, then?” he asks, laughter in his voice.
He expects Hans to bite back with a snarky comment and demand more but the blond gives a tiny nod.
Henry’s blood boils with the admission, the secret compliment.
Hans’ lips are red now, parted for breath. Henry surges forward and damn the slosh of water that goes overboard. This next kiss is urgent.
Hans melts into it, strangely pliant like he’d been that first night of theirs. Henry had wondered if it had been the fatigue, the hunger, the fear for Henry’s life. It turns out he might just have that effect on him.
He tugs Hans into his lap and takes his mouth harder. Hans hums, licks Henry’s lower lip and sucks it into his mouth. God. His best friend, naked and sliding against Henry’s aroused flesh, all for him. He almost can’t take it.
But because he’ll die if he denies Hans, he steadies himself by grabbing two handfuls of arse and squeezing.
“Fuck,” Hans moans again, pulling back.
“Is this romantic enough for you?” Henry asks and gets slapped on the back of the head for his troubles.
“Jesus, what do I have to do to shut you up?”
They need only one glance at each other to start laughing. And because he can, and because it’s good, Henry leans up again for another kiss. Smiling into it makes it that little bit harder but he can’t fathom stopping.
He clenches his fingers so Hans makes that pretty sound again, right inside him, and Henry catalogues it away, too. Something coarse under his fingertips halts his movement. With a frown, he breaks their kiss to rest his forehead on Hans’ shoulder while he explores the edge of that scar. The first one Henry had been there for, had failed to prevent.
Hands in his hair, gently pulling, force him to look back up. Hans’ eyes hold a myriad of reassurances but over them all Henry hears that phrase again. You’ve never let me down.
He exhales, heavy and shaky. How is he going to do this when his heart beats against its cage so wildly every time he remembers who is in his arms.
“Henry,” said as a prayer more than anything.
Hans twists on his lap, arms wrapping around Henry with something like desperation. Too much: he hisses in pain.
“Shit, your shoulder,” Henry curses, one hand reaching up on instinct to cup the back of the bandage. He frowns at the front of it, looking for blood, glaring to hold it back.
“I’m fine,” Hans sighs but the edge doesn’t leave his voice.
Henry tuts and gently pushes him off. “Turn around,” he instructs and despite Hans’ half-hearted protest he does, sitting in the middle of the tub with his back to Henry. He traces the lines of linen crossing around Hans’ shoulder and expels a breath of relief when he finds it clean still. “This is stupid,” he says. “If it gets too wet we’ll have to redress it.”
“I wanted to be with you,” Hans says.
They could have sung this song to each other from the start. Henry smiles, endeared almost to tears, and brings his mouth to rest over the highest knob of Hans’ spine. “I know. I want you here too. Just don’t want you hurt.”
Hans huffs through his nose like Pebbles does when Henry refuses her an extra apple. He spreads his legs and pulls Hans back against him, fighting hard against his need to hide his own desires, to shy away from his half-hard cock resting against Hans’ backside. Hans has stated his own wants plainly, with that easy way of his when he knows his words will get him anywhere. Henry loses his own language around Hans. That night, barely daring to understand Hans’ declaration, he’d only managed a few pitiful affirmations in response. I’ll be back. I promise. And then nothing, only his body moving in an attempt to show Hans that he’d heard him. Kissing, undressing, stroking because he didn’t know how to explain the space Hans has taken up in his heart.
Tongue-tied again, he mouths at the side of Hans’ neck, revels in the pleased little sigh that follows. He wraps his arms around Hans’ middle, carefully avoids moving anything but his hands so Hans’ torso stays nice and still.
He wonders when Hans’ sweat started to smell like home.
Hans’ head rolls back and they stick their cheeks together, stubble catching against stubble and holding them in place. Henry could almost reach his mouth like that, but he wants all those sweet sounds to remember later.
He trails his palms down Hans’ flanks, then slides one over that scar that crosses over his stomach.
“I wanted to take care of you too,” Hans whispers.
“You asked to be wooed, if I recall correctly,” Henry chuckles.
“You shouldn’t pay attention to what I say.”
“Since when?”
He rests his hands over the top of Hans’ thighs to feel the rising tension there.
“Since I don’t know what I’m saying around you,” Hans moans when Henry digs a finger in each groove between his friend’s thighs and groin.
God, that he can touch him there. That Hans wants him to. He feels himself get harder and can’t hold back a lazy thrust up into Hans’ bulk.
“Good,” he says. “Cause I don’t know what I’m doing. If we’re both idiots, does it cancel out?”
Hans makes a sound that is half a chuckle and half a whimper, hips pushing back into Henry’s crotch. Henry hurts himself biting into his own lip to keep his roar in. His hands, treacherous things, tug hard on Hans’ thighs to spread him wider, until their legs are fused together and Henry can see, painfully clearly through the water, the shape of Hans’ need for him.
He wraps a hand around it, Hans’ cock warm and solid in his grip. Hans keeps a strangled sound behind his teeth and twitches against him.
“Shhh, stay still,” Henry hushes.
“You stay still.”
Henry stops his hand, fingers loosely curled around his friend’s prick.
“Like that?”
“God I hate you…”
Henry smiles into Hans’ wet cheek. “You don’t,” he affirms because Hans told him that a few days ago. In far too many words and without looking him in the eye but Henry, for all his thick-headedness sometimes, understood at least that.
Besides, he has one other certainty about this, acquired much earlier, possibly on the day he untied Hans’ from a tree north from Rattay and carried him, beaten bloody, back to town. It’s that Hans loves when Henry pushes back.
He drags his hand down the length of Hans’ cock, not tight enough, just to feel him buck again and bring his free hand on a hipbone, pressing down.
“Just let me take my time… please?” Henry asks, cradling Hans’ balls, feeling the skin give under his touch like he couldn’t do on that dreadful night. “I want to…” I want to learn you. Fuck, he can’t say that.
Luckily, he doesn’t have to.
Hans relaxes into him again, legs going lax and pushing Henry’s further outward. “Fine. Do your worst, you lazy peasant.”
Henry grabs him hard this time, gives him a couple of firm strokes before stopping to tease the head. “You came back for more of that peasant,” he says. “And I think you know very well that my hands are not lazy.” To make his point, he brings his free one to rest over the side of Hans’ chest that is free of bandages.
He falters for a second. Girls like this, but…
He tries it soft enough that he can deny it if Hans hates it. Brushes the pad of his thumb against the side of Hans’ nipple, here and gone again. He’s close enough he cannot miss the way Hans’ jaw drops a little further.
He does it again, slightly more firmly and with a slow stroke underwater. A rushed exhale leaves Hans, so strong it ripples the surface of the water.
Henry doesn’t blink. He needs to see it all, the flush spreading across his friend’s chest, how his nipple pebbles and hardens under his touch until Henry can give it a light pinch and Hans moans high. Hans’ knees poking out of the water, lifting higher when Henry finds a good rhythm with his other hand.
His head swims with it all. Hans, is all he can think. Hans’s body that he can touch. Hans is letting him, Hans is trusting him to pleasure him. Let it be known Henry of Skalitz does not give allegiance lightly.
He doesn’t know how long it lasts. Enough that Hans begins showing impatience again, writhing against Henry, pushing his arse back onto Henry’s rock hard cock.
“Hans,” Henry warns, forehead pinched from holding back.
“Not just me,” Hans says. “Please.”
Through the fires of arousal, Henry makes little sense of it. “What?”
A hand tentatively reaches back, grabs the outer edge of his thigh as Hans rocks back once more. “You too…”
Henry’s vision blurs. For all he longs to give Hans what he wants, it hadn’t occurred to him to take, too.
He gives an experimental thrust and gasps. Water makes everything both slide and catch, a lovely torture. “Yes,” Hans urges him. “Come on.”
It is hard to retain any sort of finesse after this. Henry’s body comes to life, remembers that it can be selfish and he squeezes one arm around Hans’ chest to hold him there. He ruts against him, like an animal, he thinks with the tips of his ears burning. Hans doesn’t balk at the roughness. He reaches his good arm back to grasp Henry’s hair, his other hand urging Henry along by digging into his thigh.
It’s undignified, baseless. Not what Henry ought to give his lord but apparently, what his lord wants. He strips Hans’ cock without thought, like he would do to himself to reach a fast release and every harsh pull quickens his friend’s breath.
“Ah, Henry…”
Henry growls. Hans can’t say his name like that, he can’t, not like a hymn. He tries to shush him but his own mouth betrays him, only good enough to plant wet kisses along Hans’ jaw, to feel the scratch of stubble on his tongue.
“Henry I’m…”
Henry bucks and comes at the mere thought that he might get to see Hans spill again. To his dismay, he’s got his eyes closed when it happens.
He’s drunk. Every sound of soft pleasure from his friend’s lips spurs his own release harder, longer, his hand merciless around Hans’ softening cock. Hans lets him do that, too. He whimpers, slightly pained, but doesn’t push Henry’s grip off him.
Henry plants little kisses of apology onto his neck, the shorn base of his skull. He’s always wondered how those short hairs would feel, if they would tickle. He can try them against his mouth now, finds them softer than he thought on his lips.
Words are hard to grasp again, for a while. Henry watches, dazed and pleased, the light swirls of Hans’ spend mixing in the water. They are silent for so long he wonders if Hans has fallen asleep but without a warning, his friend shifts, tilting his head back to look him in the eye.
“Let me wash you?”
And because Hans asks, Henry concedes. It is a bit of a shuffle to manoeuvre them so Hans sits precariously on the edge of the tub, skin covered in goosebumps neither of them mention while he reaches for the soap and Henry’s hair.
The first pass of a lathered hand carding through the longer strands on top wracks him with a violent shiver.
“Henry?” Hans asks, hand cautiously hovering behind his skull now.
Henry pinches his eyes shut and reaches for it, slams it too hard back in his hair. Hans laughs, light and young.
They’ve never done this before, they both know, with anyone. Fucking, sure, kissing and holding each other after, maybe. Never this all-encompassing care for the heart and soul and body of someone they can’t fathom a life without.
Henry lets Hans tilt his head back, scratching his nails from his forehead to his nape in long lines that wreck him more than the slash of a sword ever will.
Oh how he’s wanted to be loved.
Tears prickle and he hopes they can merge with the humidity of the room enough for Hans to dismiss them.
They go on without words, Hans moving down to rub Henry’s shoulders. His stomach churns a little, wondering if Hans learnt that from the bathhouse wenches. He comforts himself with the idea Hans has stored the knowledge to use on him.
“Not too sore?” Hans asks after a while, rubbing soapy fingers on Henry’s lower back.
Henry snorts. “Everything aches but… s’all right.”
Your hands on me don’t, he means to say but he will need some time yet to allow himself the same grandeur of speech Hans has learnt since boyhood. For now, he puts his own hands over his friend’s, strokes the back of them to convey the same thing.
“How’s your shoulder?” he asks back.
Henry’s body thoroughly scrubbed, Hans slides back into the water properly. “It’ll be fine. I feel really… dazed, right now.”
They turn to face each other again, Henry up on his knees so Hans doesn’t have to strain when he brings their mouths together. Henry wonders if every new kiss will keep tasting better.
Hans chuckles, air tickling Henry’s cheek.
“See, you’re perfectly capable of romance.”
Henry’s face stings with embarrassment.
“Have I said that out loud?” he asks, voice squeaking out of his control.
Hans grins, all but mocking. He cups Henry’s burning cheek with a cool, wet hand. “Aye, you have. I wish you would say more if that’s what’s turning in that thick skull of yours.”
“I don’t think you want to hear everything,” Henry grumbles.
“Why not?”
“Well a lot of it is me thinking about my next meal.”
Their shared giggles are easy, little bubbles that they can pop with more kisses.
The water gets cold. Reluctantly, they return their bodies to the cold gravity of the room, quickly patting themselves down before they can stand in front of the fire. Both still naked, loath to end the moment. Henry’s hands can’t seem to keep away from Hans’ shoulder, caressing, checking. The same sentiment lingers in Hans’ eyes when they take in Henry’s shivering form.
Still alive.
He kisses Hans’ forehead before he can think better of it and second guess himself. Too sweet, too much.
He’s glad his body carries him through most of life for the way Hans huddles against his chest next.
“It’s like you’ve read all the great knightly romances,” Hans whispers in his arms.
“What do you mean?”
Hans smirks at him, sheepish.
“Nothing.”
Henry fights off confusion with a smile and decides he can find out later.
For now, he will savour this. The strange pain of heat and cold mixed on his skin. The perfect scent of Hans’ damp hair when he nuzzles into it like a dog, and makes him laugh again.
The strong hands cupped under his shoulder blades.
His friend, alive and in his arms.
His lover, beloved in return.