Work Text:
"Thorfinn--"
"Hngh...!"
It was a hard orgasm, as violent as the fucking that gave way to it. Thorfinn shut his eyes tight, biting his own lip in a desperate attempt to mute the shameful moan that threatened to rip his throat apart, stubborn even at the edge of climax, refusing to sound remotely similar to those weak women the band dragged across the tents like sacks of hay, for he wasn't prey nor meat nor empty-headed scum but a hunter letting out steam.
His body shattered as the release tore from his core, but he kept riding Askeladd's cock with rough, grinding thrusts, uncaring of the hot spurts of cum making a mess on the man's chest. His muscles clenched tight around the length buried deep inside, holding it captive, like those christian monks clutched their crosses in their hands prior to their gruesome fates at the mercy of a viking ax, milking the release that warmed his walls and made the pleasure even better.
For a moment the world seemed to narrow down to the slick slide and hot friction, and the raw burn in his scarred thighs from the rough rhythm they'd fallen into, no, the rhythm he had imposed. He finally stopped and slumped forward in a daze, his breath ragged against the cool air, but as the orgasm ebbed and left him trembling and spent, a sharp ache suddenly twisted through Thorfinn's muscles beneath the fading waves of selfish pleasure.
Pain flared in his back, in his bruised hips and then deeper, a dull throb in his ass from the unyielding fuck. And just like that, he went from biting back a moan of pleasure to biting back a hiss of pain.
Askeladd noticed, of course, but didn't pull out right away. Instead, those same calloused hands that had beaten up and pinned Thorfinn down countless times shifted, steady and with shocking attentiveness. One drifted to Thorfinn’s shoulder before settling a thumb into the tight knots there, pressing in slow, working the tension loose without a word, while the other one made its way to Thorfinn's hip, caressing the skin from thigh to pelvis in a touch that was as soft as it was firm and grounding, setting Thorfinn's nerves on fire. He went rigid immediately.
The shift felt so wrong. This wasn’t how it ended. It was never anything but a sharp break, a swift turn away, and never a departure from the apathy that defined them. But instead of that, Askeladd's fingers dug deeper, mapping the hard lines of Thorfinn’s back as if they meant to learn them. Firm coaxing strokes, as if trying to pull out the strain from muscle and bone alike. And when the heat of the man's palms truly sank in his sensitive skin, unsettling and unwelcome to Thorfinn, it spread and stirred something he didn’t have a name for, something that didn’t belong in a place where only the dying embers of maladaptive carnal encounters should reside.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Thorfinn muttered, his voice rough, but his body wasn't willing to obey him, at least not in that state where he was still frayed at the edges. He leaned into the pressing touch just a tad, unknowingly, as his jaw tensed with instinctual resistance.
Thorfinn came to this place to spend his fury in flesh and friction, nothing more. To bruise and get bruised, that was all it was meant to be, a controlled explosion and a way to keep moving without splintering under the weight of things. And whatever Askeladd took from it, be it amusement, control, victory, meant nothing. None of it changed the end waiting for him, because Baldy was going to die by his father's dagger regardless. With a shield carved from indifference Thorfinn refused to find meaning in encounters like these, as well as to even wonder why Askeladd allowed them. He didn't give a shit about whatever Baldy gained from his side.
Which was why this slow gentleness felt wrong in a way that set his nerves on edge. It felt unnecessary. It wasn’t violence and it didn’t fit anywhere. And because it didn’t fit, it felt like a trap. Mockery, maybe?
Thorfinn could endure pain. He understood it, it was simple and familiar and welcomed when it sharpened his purpose, as he was always eager to find even more excuses to keep on hating Baldy. But this silent and measured touch that avoided hurting him further, that eased his pain... This wasn't how enemies touched.
Tenderness was an arrow he couldn't afford to pierce his armor with, nor something Askeladd simply did out of the blue like that.
Askeladd's breath ghosted warm against his ear with the proximity, his cock finally slipping free from Thorfinn's hole with a slickness that made Thorfinn's skin prickle. The warmth of Askeladd's body still pressed close, their mingled breaths, ragged in the dim light of the room, the wetness between them, like a lingering reminder of the raw friction that had just consumed them both...
"Did I manage to shut you up for once? Good." Hands glided down to Thorfinn's lower back, thumbs digging into the taut muscles around his hips, easing the ache from where Thorfinn had impaled himself on Askeladd's prick repeatedly with the carefulness of an arrow being shot by blindfolded eyes.
There was no rush to Askeladd's touch, just a quiet attentiveness that felt foreign. Thorfinn's fists clenched in the furs beneath them, tendons standing beneath scarred skin. His thighs relaxed imperceptibly under the continued caress and the aftershocks of pleasure. Something beneath Thorfinn's ribs felt pulled too tight. The sweat was cooling too fast against his back and the scent of sex hung heavy in the air, suddenly too aware of it all.