Chapter Text
It was dark, down in the dungeons. Sam liked that about them—it was freeing, knowing that nobody could see him when he was down here. He could do whatever he wanted and nobody would ever know.
It helped that he wasn’t one of the dungeon’s guests. They probably didn’t appreciate the darkness quite so much as he did.
He kept his right hand on the rough stone walls as he walked, counting one when he brushed a wooden door, and two when he passed another. He had to stop when he caught a splinter, which he pulled out with his teeth before moving on. When he got to the third door Sam stopped again, patting the door until he found the keyhole, retrieved the key from his belt.
The door creaked when it opened, and slammed shut behind Sam with a heavy bang after he’d shuffled inside the cell. Chains clinked as the cell’s guest looked up, and the silence after that was hard and prickly. The guest had only been here for a day, but the cell smelled already and Sam wrinkled his nose. He shouldn’t have been surprised.
“You’re just going to stand there?” a harsh, cracked voice sounded. “What, is that some kind of intimidation strategy?”
“No,” Sam said softly. “I came down to talk to you.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” the voice spat.
“I guess you wouldn’t,” Sam smiled. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that makes it less frightening.”
“Frightening? I’m not afraid of you.”
He might be, if he knew who Sam was. “If you say so. He’s going to be okay, by the way.”
The voice was silent. Sam sat himself on the floor carefully. “The wound wasn’t as bad as it looked and the bleeding was stopped pretty quickly. He’s awake and moving around already. Did you really think you could kill the Sorcerer King with a crossbow?” Albeit a cleverly hidden one.
The silence turned sullen, and Sam smirked. “Are you hungry? They don’t always remember to feed prisoners every day, but I can make sure they bring you something at least once a day.”
“Where are you holding my partner?” the voice demanded. “Tell me where he is.”
“What’s your name?”
“Where is he?”
“I’ll answer your question if you answer mine,” Sam said, leaning back against the wall.
The silence filled with tension for a long minute, like a pig’s stomach filling with water until it burst. “Henry.” The name sounded despondent.
“That’s a nice name.”
“Where’s my partner?”
“Hm?” Sam smiled. “Oh, he’s being tortured to death somewhere. I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about him. They decided that since he’s a lot older than you he must have masterminded the attack, so he’s being punished.”
“Punished?” Henry’s voice hitched. “You can’t…just execute him. You don’t need to torture him.”
“Well, I’m not torturing anyone,” Sam said, bored. “What did you think was going to happen? I suppose you thought you would kill the evil Sorcerer King and make the world a better place through his absence.”
“Of course we did,” Henry growled. “He kills people, conscripts people into his army, experiments on people. He’s a monster!”
“I know.” Sam knew all of that a lot better than Henry probably did. “Too bad nobody cares enough to stop him.” Rather, the terrain and the fact that this was a strategically unimportant area made it hard for the kingdom to justify a campaign, which prevented an attack. But Sam thought they could if they really wanted to. For a little while longer that possibility would be open, at least. After that, they would be sorry they hadn’t taken the opportunity.
“We cared. Me and Terry cared.”
“Well, now you’re in a dungeon and Terry’s had his tongue ripped out, so that was a pretty stupid ideal to act on, don’t you think?”
The silence grew heavy again, angry.
“Were you and Terry having sex?”
“No! What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Just wondering. You were his apprentice or something. It would have been pretty normal.” Honestly, Sam didn’t think it was something to get upset about.
“Well, we weren’t. We were just friends.” Henry’s voice cracked on the last word.
“If you say so.” It didn’t really matter now anyway. Sam moved forward carefully, listening to the sound of Henry breathing, until he was right in front of him. He found Henry’s chest and ran his hands up it, up his arms to his wrists where they were manacled to the wall, then back down to his neck, and his face.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Touching you.” Sam ran his fingers over Henry’s face, getting an idea of the contours of his skull, the shape of his features.
“Well, stop!”
“You don’t seem to understand that you’re the one chained to the wall and I’m the one with the key,” Sam said, tracing Henry’s eyes. Henry tried to move away but he could only move so far and Sam followed him. “That means I get to do whatever I want, and your attitude while I do it will determine how much you get fed.”
Now the silence was sharp, punctuated by the intake of breath from Henry. He was afraid. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Just…kill me,” Henry said, his voice shaking a little. Sam hadn’t expected him to get that afraid that quickly. The dark did that to people, he thought. Even if they weren’t afraid of the dark, being in the dark made them afraid of other things. People were afraid of what they couldn’t see.
Sam wasn’t afraid of what he couldn’t see.
“Why would I do that?” Sam asked softly.
“Just kill me!” Henry barked. “Don’t…don’t fucking play with me like a cat with a mouse. Torture me like you’re doing to Terry, or just take my head off.”
“No.” Sam’s took his hand from Henry’s face, felt his way down Henry’s chest again, pausing at his waist. “I like your head. I bet you’re very pretty. I like the rest of you, too. I can tell that you spent a lot of time training and learning how to fight. You must hate that you’re chained up here, not able to move. I don’t know how to fight. Normally you would punch me if I did this, but you can’t and that must just be…terrible.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” Sam smiled into the dark, quickly unlacing Henry’s pants. Henry made a sound and bucked back, slamming forward into Sam with sudden speed.
Sam held up a hand, called on his power, slammed Henry back into the wall and held him there. “Also, I’m a sorcerer too, so you really ought to be more polite.”
Henry didn’t answer, but the silence was sharper than ever and Sam reached out, still holding Henry in place, and finished undoing his pants. He pushed them down around Henry’s hips. “The first time I got caught touching myself, the next day there was a girl in my room,” Sam said, tracing the outline of Henry’s penis inside his smallclothes for a second, before pushing those down too. “Which was very thoughtful of my father, but I was always afraid to tell him that I wanted a boy instead.”
Dad didn’t want Sam having children, so he probably wouldn’t have cared. Still, Sam had kept that to himself. He didn’t need to give his father more reasons to be disappointed with him. He took Henry in his hand, considering the size of it and reaching down into his own pants for comparison. “I thought you were my age, but maybe you’re older than me,” he mused. Feeling around, Henry had more hair than he did, too.
“So, what?” Henry’s voice was strained. “When you heard there was a boy in the dungeons you decided to sneak down here instead?”
“Pretty much,” Sam said, rubbing Henry slowly, pleased with how he got bigger and harder. “Although me coming down here wasn’t a secret—they were just going to let you starve to death, but I asked them to give you to me instead. I may have given the impression that I was going to torture you, but I’m not, really.”
Henry was pretty hard now. Sam found it kind of neat that he could get like that even though he didn’t want to. The body just sort of did whatever it wanted. And Henry’s body seemed to want Sam’s hand, even if Henry himself didn’t. He was hard as well, so Sam took a second to free himself from his pants, and started jerking them both in tandem.
The silence was banished by the sound of both of them panting. Henry squirmed against the wall as if trying to get away. “You’re…you’re sick,” he panted. It sounded like he might be crying.
That appealed to Sam and he felt himself tipping over the edge and carefully pointed his hard-on away from himself, shooting his seed onto Henry and down the back of his own hand. He didn’t want to make a mess on himself that he would have to explain if someone saw.
Sam sat back, panting, paused in his efforts on Henry for the moment. That had been better than he’d expected—and Henry hadn’t even done anything except be there. Henry was panting too, and for just a moment Sam considered leaving him there like that, but that would be mean. So he resumed his pace, ignored the cramp that started to form in his hand and kept going until Henry made a strained noise and started spurting his seed into Sam’s hand. Sam carefully pointed Henry towards his own belly to keep the mess minimal.
“There,” Sam said, lifting the hand he’d been using on Henry and taking one tentative lick of the fluid there before wiping it all on Henry’s shirt. “I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you.”
“Fuck you,” Henry whimpered softly. Honestly he was acting as if Sam had ripped his cock off instead of jerking it off. “I hate you.”
“I hope you change your mind about that,” Sam said, standing and doing up his pants. “I think we could be friends.”
“You want me to be your secret little toy,” Henry spat. “I’m going to tell everyone who walks by this cell what just happened. See how secret it stays.”
“Hm.” Sam thought about that. “I wish you wouldn’t. They might take you away from me and then they’d just kill you.”
“I’d rather die…”
“Why?” Sam interrupted. “Why would you rather die? If you’re alive you can escape. You can plan things. You can try to do something. You could even try to kill the Sorcerer King again, if that’s what you wanted. Or you could kill me, or chain me up and do whatever you wanted. But only if you’re alive.” The silence this time was like static, loaded and tense. “It’s better to be alive than to be dead.”
Henry didn’t say anything, and Sam turned to leave, considered leaving Henry like that for fun, but waved a hand and his pants did themselves up. “I’ll make sure you get fed properly, and that you and your cell are cleaned every day. I’ll see you again soon.” He pulled the door open, the creak echoing through the dungeon.
“What’s your name?” Henry asked, just as Sam was about to let the door close.
“Sam,” he said, and the door closed behind him with a heavy thud. Sam locked it, listening to the metallic click. “And Henry?” he called, knowing Henry would hear him because there should be a little grate at the top of the door. “Next time you try to kill my father, do a better job, okay?”