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By this time tomorrow, Hans will be married.
He has a hard time thinking about it, like a bright spot he can't look at directly. It’s a dread that he doesn’t have a name for. It’s not a threat against his life, or something he can outrun. It’s not even dangerous. But it stretches on and on before him, and all he sees is a future without color. It’s a locked door with a heavy latch. It’s a never ending march of low ceilings, forever.
Hans would have spent the day drinking himself unconscious, but Henry puts a stop to that. “Ride out with me,” he’d said, because Henry knew him better than anyone. “Hunt with me, like we used to.”
Henry knows that he needs fresh air and the outdoors, for a final taste of freedom before he’s caged for the rest of his life. And best of all, the heavy look Henry gives him promises more than a day of hunting game.
They find a good spot for their camp: secluded, beautiful, and far from any whisper of banditry that might interrupt them. Henry does all the work while Hans delegates, which, he argues, is actually the harder job, and by the time they’re done it’s naturally far too late in the day to get any good hunting done, and they must think of some way to fill all their stolen time.
Hans settles himself comfortably on their nest of blankets – no tent, open to the sky, because even walls of cloth would be too much to bear now – and raises an expectant brow. “Will you come here,” he calls out, imperious, “or must I command you?”
Henry, eager as a puppy, nearly trips over his own feet like a lovesick boy, and kisses Hans without even having to be asked. It makes Hans feel warm, and his stupid heart beats faster, even if the two of them have been at it – this sin without sin – for months, and something as small as Henry’s kisses shouldn’t set his head spinning like a child's wooden top.
But this new passion makes him a fool. Hans was never a stranger to the game of want and wanting, but Henry has unlocked a hunger that Hans hadn't known existed, and they’ve done things to one another that Hans would have never dared to dream up. There are times that Hans can't sleep, can't eat, for want of him.
At least Henry, kissing him now until Hans sighs with delight, is made the fool with him. “You could command me anywhere,” he murmurs, answering a question that Hans has already forgotten. “As long as it’s by your side.”
He says it so simply, as if it will always be true. Usually Henry is the more steady of the two of them, reining in Hans and his fancies, but in this belief he’s proven himself unwavering. He’ll make it work, he promises Hans, in whispers, in declarations, in bed, in the dusk and the dark. He’ll fix it. They’ll plan for it. He’ll gladly kill for it.
Hans has never wanted anything more in his life, with a pain as sharp as a blade. Oh, to have Henry by his side forever; turning to his right or looking over his shoulder, a year, ten years, a hundred years from now, and finding Henry there.
But the future looms so dark, a storm cloud thundering with church bells, and Hans, who has never enjoyed pondering and planning even in the best of times, shies away. It’s still too much, and too dreadful. He flees to the safety of simple prizes: Henry’s kisses, on his mouth and on his neck. Henry’s hair, looking a mess from Hans and his searching fingers. Good, Hans thinks, with all the presumption of his station, and the greed of a lonely child’s heart. That’s mine.
“Will you have me?” Henry asks him, as sincerely as the first time, when he'd been so hushed and fervent in that dark room.
Hans gives what he hopes is a deadpan look. “Don’t tell me you’ve become stupid again, after all my hard work.”
Henry snorts, and bumps their noses together. Hans’s idiotic little heart likes that, too. “Then how would my lord have me?”
Hans pretends to think about it. The real answer is anyway, every way, however you wanted me, but…Hans can’t just say that. A nobleman should have some pride. “I suppose that depends. Not too worn out from our ride, I hope?”
Henry’s eyes flash, like they do when he competes in tourneys. “I’m never too worn out for you.”
“You could still stand proud for me, then?”
Henry snorts again. “Awful.”
“Oh, that’s right, it’s your forging hammer. I need a smithing joke.”
“I should never have told you about that.”
“Ah, so I shouldn’t commission a ballad in your cock’s honor?” Hans teases. “Or what about those massive hanging – ”
“Hans.”
“It's true. I’ve seen smaller balls on breeding studs.”
That shocks an outraged laugh out of Henry, and he gives Hans a shove. He’s blushing like a virginal maid. “God’s Blood, be quiet!”
“Giant,” Hans cackles, catching Henry’s hands. “No stallions in your bloodline? Are we quite certain? You could beget so many strong sons.”
Henry is laughing, and pretending to be more offended than he really is. “Stop that wicked mouth or I’ll stop it for you.”
“With what? Your cock, or the two sacks of grain you keep lashed down there?”
Henry playfully wrestles him to the ground, and their laughter shakes the trees. This is what life ought to be: easy and sweet and without any past or future. The rest of the world can hang for all Hans cares; all he wants is to make Henry laugh, and to turn him every shade of red possible.
“Shut up or I'll fill you up,” Henry threatens. “I’ll get a strong son on you.”
Something flutters in Hans’s chest. “I'm not a fucking maid, Henry.” He struggles a little more, just for show, and Henry pins his hands above his head.
“Could be,” Henry counters, grinning. “My maid, my girl, the way you take me.”
That does – well, it does two things to Hans at once. First and most strongly, it floods him with a startling wave of lust, in a hot rolling shiver through his body and down his legs. It’s so strong that a moan tumbles out of him before he can stop it. It's only a little keening thing, but they both hear it.
Henry, above him, freezes. He looked down at Hans, and his lips part in surprise. “You liked that.” It isn’t a question.
Secondly, belatedly, shame follows the lust, and Hans flushes and turns his face away.
Henry won't be deterred, of course. He’s as stubborn as a bull. “Don't hide your lovely face.”
Hans can hear a smile in his voice, which makes it all so much worse. Hans squeezes his eyes shut in childish spite. “Not lovely.”
“Beautiful, my most noble sir.”
“Don't mock me.”
“My handsome lord, then.”
Hans sits back up and pushes Henry away, more forcefully than he probably needs to. But Henry lets him, because Henry has always allowed Hans too much. Hans swallows, still burning from both desire and humiliation, and stares at his hands.
“I won’t be less to you,” he says, sharp and indignant.
“Never.” Henry answers so fast that it's impossible for him to have really thought about it. “I’ll kill the first man who says so.”
Hans scoffs and shakes his head.
There’s a long pause, and then Hans feels Henry’s warm hand on his knee. It’s not a forceful touch. It just rests there. Hans flinches anyway, because sometimes, patience from Henry is unbearable.
“I won’t,” Hans repeats.
There’s another pause. “When you fuck me,” Henry says, bluntly, “do you think less of me?”
Hans looks back at Henry, his mouth twisting sourly. “That’s not the same thing at all.”
“Don’t see how,” Henry says, with his simple peasant logic.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re still yourself.” Hans gestures vaguely in Henry’s direction. “You don’t…come out the other side changed.”
“Changed how?”
Hans can barely touch the words in his own mind. How can Henry expect him to articulate his humiliation? He would never admit it to anyone else and he doesn’t want to admit it now, but Henry knows Hans, down to the core and marrow. Hans would never be able to hide from him, anyway.
“I want – fuck. I shouldn’t take you easily, and I certainly shouldn’t want to.” Hans hates the way his voice sounds: pitchy and scratched, hardly a man’s voice at all. “The way I carry on sometimes…it’s not how a nobleman behaves.”
Henry flashes a small, indulgent smile, as if he’s charmed by Hans and not enduring him. “I like how you behave.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Why?” Henry presses, the goddamn scent hound.
“Because I’m fucking deviant!” Hans snaps, pushed into it. His face is red, awful and obvious; he feels scraped raw, like a hollowed out fruit. “It’s all I can think about. I want you to fuck me like a whore, like a fucking woman, until my mind falls away. I like it. I dream about it, for Christ’s sake, getting ravaged by you until I can’t think, taken like a useless – ”
Hans cuts himself off and turns away again. He chokes through the rest like it’s a blood clot in his throat. “If you asked me to, I think I’d – I don’t know what I’d do. Anything you wanted. You can’t fucking imagine it. I’m like a ravenous dog. It’s pathetic. What sort of man wants to be another man’s wench? What sort of – it's a weakness. It’s weak. ”
For an agonizing beat, all Hans can hear is the blood pounding in his ears.
Then, Henry breathes, “Jesus.”
Hans scowls, and snaps his gaze back. But his angry words die in his throat when he sees the look on Henry’s face.
He doesn’t look disgusted, or even pitying. He looks starving.
“What if I wanted that, too?” Henry asks.
“Do you?” Hans replies, too fast. Then he catches himself; this shouldn’t excite either of them. “How the fuck could you want me after knowing that?”
Henry’s hand still rests on Hans’s knee. It’s a touch that would be innocent enough, if not for the sudden intent behind Henry’s eyes. “How could I not?”
Hans swallows. Hanush’s voice and a thousand lectures ring in his head. You may fuck a whore, lad, but never trust her, and don’t be fool enough to love her. “I won’t be – ”
“Not less. You could never be less to me.” Henry’s smile goes a little wry, at some private joke. “Even if I was less to you, once.”
“Don’t say that,” Hans orders, even though it’s terribly true.
“If wanting that makes you all twisted up, then I’m twisted up with you.” Henry puts his hand behind Hans’s neck, rubbing his thumb over the thrum of his pulse. It must be fluttering wildly, like a trapped bird. “I think I’d like you to fuck me that way, too.”
It takes a moment for that to sink in. Hans blinks, and feels suddenly dizzy. “Oh,” he says.
Henry’s expression grows indulgent again. His hand shifts, and now he holds Hans by the throat; it’s just the lightest grip, barely touching. Hans melts anyway. “Just not right now.”
Hans sways on the spot, calmed that easily with just a look and a touch, and Henry’s words. He ought to be ashamed of himself, but… “Not right now,” he agrees.
That indulgent look of Henry's shifts, just a bit, and Hans catches a glimpse of…something. For a moment, Henry isn’t looking at him with devotion, or even hunger. Hans doesn’t know its name, but there’s a totality to it; the enormity of Henry’s desires, the utter wholeness of them, clenched tight in Henry’s fist.
Hans has only ever caught it in passing, out of the corner of his eye, or directed in its darkest form towards other goals and less fortunate targets. Henry keeps it carefully tucked away, as if Hans will be soiled if he touches it. But now, somehow, Hans has made it wake up and take notice.
It’s that, more than anything, that lets Hans give in. He’s not brave enough to ask for himself, but he wants all of Henry. Every part of Henry is his, by right.
Hans leans in and kisses Henry, in an invitation without words; and Henry responds with a long sigh that almost sounds relieved.
Henry pushes Hans back by the loose hand on his throat, and rubs his thumb roughly over Hans’s parted lips. “Let me give you this.” It’s a whispered plea. “You’ll be only mine, just once, before…”
Hans kisses him again before the words are even fully out of his mouth. Hans clutches at Henry’s face and wraps his arms around his neck and pulls, gasps, presses, until Hans can hardly breathe. As they scramble to undress, Henry’s hands are all over him; and in return Hans strokes, clutches, rubs his face over whatever he can reach. Hans kisses his way down Henry’s neck; Henry yanks Hans back by his hair and does the same.
Hans would have been shocked at that boldness, once. But now his whole body comes alive under Henry’s touch. The coming storm and his shame remain, but beneath it all is his constant, every present passion for Henry. He wants so badly for that to be enough. Just once, as Henry said.
By the time they’re both naked, Hans is flushed everywhere, in ugly stripes and patches down his face and shoulders, creeping down his chest. Henry follows that flush with his mouth, kissing his way down impatiently; the instant he gets below Hans’s neck, where prying eyes won’t see, he starts to bite, clearly intent on leaving his mark. Hans hums in approval even as he tugs on Henry’s ear in reprimand.
Henry grins and keeps going, running his lips and his tongue down to Hans’s stomach, and over his hips. Hans groans, and throws his head back. All he's doing is lying there, just like he wanted. If Henry wanted to fuck a woman he could go out and get one, not a poor imitation, not a twisted useless boy on his back, unable to replay Henry with anything but demands for more.
Then, Henry's mouth lands on his cock, and Hans stops caring about any of it. It’s hard for Hans to think of anything at all, really. Henry’s mouth is so good and the pleasure rears up so fast that Hans gets lost in it immediately.
And then, Henry pulls off and huffs out a small laugh, the like he’s just thought of some clever plan. He ducks his head back down, spreads Hans a little wider, and licks at his hole with the flat of his tongue.
Hans chokes back a shocked moan. They don’t actually – they don’t do this, often. It wouldn’t have occurred to Hans to ask for it. And now he’s so hard , his cock thick, as Henry mouths at him and runs his probing tongue around the tight rim of his hole, spreading Hans wider for more access, lapping at him ravenously. Hans throws a hand over his mouth to block whatever is about to burst out of it.
Then Henry wraps his arms around Hans’s middle and sits straight up, lifting Hans off the ground; the sound that comes out of Hans, shocked and aching, would make a whore blush, but Henry doesn’t stop. He moans, as if he loves it, his face buried as deeply as he can get.
If Hanush could see Hans now, he would die of shame. His father must be weeping in Heaven. The true heir of Rattay, with his arse in the air, laid out for Henry like an obscene banquet. That thought stops Hans’s breath, his mind roiling with muddled lust. No true lord would let himself be used thusly, to be so debased. Henry moans again, and Hans echoes him in pure, simple hunger.
Just when it starts to become too much, Henry finally lifts his head. His mouth and chin are shining with spit, and slick, almost as slick as if he'd had his mouth on a –
No, Hans thinks sharply, hysterical. Don’t think it.
Henry sets him down and leans over Hans as if to kiss him, and Hans would let him, God help him, no matter where his mouth has been. But then Henry’s smile goes wicked, and he ducks his head and rubs his face on Hans’s neck, smearing the wetness and that earthy scent of Hans, scratching with his unshaven face. Hans lets out a yowl of outraged protest, even as his stupid, useless body ruts up helplessly, chasing more.
“Animal!” Hans gasps. But he's laughing, too.
When Henry pulls away, his eyes are sparkling, and he holds himself carefully above Hans, with a hand on either side of his head. He seems to be blocking the whole world with his body, keeping it at bay, while Hans gazes up at him, flat on his back, painfully hard and naked, spread wide with his neck bared. Hans could not be more vulnerable even if Henry had a hunting knife pressed to his throat.
It's too much, suddenly, to look at him. Hans hurriedly turns over. “Do I have to order you to finish what you started?”
Henry chuckles, and he gives Hans a light, playful slap on the flank. “Up,” he says, ignoring the indignant yelp Hans lets out.
“You’re so fucking insolent,” Hans snaps, even as he rises to all fours, distressingly obedient.
Henry pours oil onto his fingers and opens Hans up with a determined, steady pace, pausing every so often to kiss Hans on the back of his neck and shoulders. As always, it’s too slow for Hans, who has never been patient and is losing his mind. Henry’s fingers work him over, stretching and probing, twisting sweetly, and Hans arches his back and ducks his head, willing his arms not to tremble, not so soon.
“Is it good?” Henry whispers, as if he can’t tell.
Hans nods, panting. Henry’s fingers brush gently over the swollen nub inside of him, and Hans hears himself make a pitiful mewling noise, and he pushes back for more. How pathetic. How weak. But how can he help it? The whole world turns into light and fire whenever Henry is inside of him. If Henry touched his cock now, he fears he might spill already.
Maybe it’s because of the way his mind always goes loose and stupid, when he starts to fall away into pleasure. But without his leave, his thoughts keep trailing to that terrible tomorrow: to the altar, to the droning feast to follow, and the dreadful bedchamber most of all, a condemned man’s cell with silken sheets.
“I'll think of you,” Hans blurts out. What the fuck is wrong with his tongue? “When I have to – when I have to bed her after.”
Henry groans into Hans’s shoulder, and bites him. It’s not hard enough to break the skin, but it’s the suggestion of it. “Bed her,” Henry repeats, like it’s a curse. Hans agrees with him.
Hans has a sudden flash of Henry, standing witness to the consummation, his eyes bright spots on the darkness. Would it make it easier?
“If you were there, I – ”
“If I was there?” Henry’s fingers stop moving, and he pulls Hans closer, covetous. “D'you want me to be?” He sounds stunned, his breath catching in his throat. “You’d want me to watch you fuck her?”
“I don't know,” Hans admits, caught on a moan.
Henry's breath turns strange, shallow. His fingers fuck into Hans harder now, and when Hans gives a new plaintive cry, Henry sucks in a hard breath and turns his face into the curve of Hans's neck. “If I was there…” His voice is slurred. “I’d want you to put your fingers inside her cunt and…and drag your seed out.”
Hans gasps so loudly that it hurts his throat, and Henry keeps talking. “I don’t want it in her, I…you’d eat it out of her, and I’d wait outside the door and then I’d kiss you until I tasted it in your mouth.”
Hans collapses, arms buckling.
Henry catches him with an arm around his waist. In a breathless, shocked whisper, he asks, “Did you like that, too?” Hans is going to fucking kill him.
“What the fuck,” Hans gasps, red faced. He glares at Henry over his shoulder, as accusingly as he can with another man’s fingers in his arse. “You've thought about it, you must have, to come up with something so…so…”
Henry has the grace to look just as surprised as Hans feels. He’s flushed high and red, pupils swallowing his blue eyes. “It's all I think about,” he says, as if that’s some acceptable excuse. He shakes his head, incredulous. “You're all I think about. You did this to me. You make me a beast without thoughts.”
“Clearly some thoughts!”
Henry smiles, just a little. “Did I shock my lord?”
Hans sputters. “I’m supposed to shock you! Where did my shy blacksmith’s boy learn to talk like that?”
Henry’s smile grows, and he leans in, lips pressed to Hans’s ear. “That’s your fault, too.”
Hans shudders and groans, letting his head hang. “I should throw you in the river.”
“Aye, you should. Ought to have me whipped, too.” Henry’s voice drops, until it’s just air, hot and delicious against Hans’s neck. “Command me.”
He means it. Hans could tell him to do anything. Hans tries to sound less desperate than he feels, and does a terrible job of it. “You know exactly what I want.”
“Do I?” Henry asks. Before Hans can wonder what that’s supposed to mean, Henry cups Henry’s jaw, pulls his head back, and gives him a deep, filthy kiss that makes Hans’s head spin. He tastes, he tastes –
Hans feels his pride hanging by a thread. “Oh, please,” he sighs, before he can help himself.
Henry pushes his cock inside, the blunt head stretching Hans wide, and it’s so full, so good already. Henry fucks Hans deep and slow, in a steady, building ache that draws Hans tight. Hans pushes back, wordlessly urging Henry to go faster, trying to match his angle, until Henry starts to hit the sharp spot of pleasure inside Hans, setting him alight with need.
It’s always been this way between them; even the first time, when they’d fumbled over-eager beyond just their mouths and hands, when it had been awkward and painful, but consuming all the same. The passion between them is a pulsing heartbeat.
“You’re mine,” Henry groans. His words are slurring again, like he’s not even thinking about them. “But you’ll be hers tomorrow…”
“Don’t say it,” Hans demands, voice wavering. “I don’t want to think of it.”
But it’s like something has unlocked Henry’s tongue, too. “Will you think of me?” He presses his lips to the curve of Hans’s spine, and makes a low sound of pain. “When you have to – please tell me you’ll think of me. Let me be there with you.”
Hans moans, and a reply tumbles out before he can stop himself. “I wish it could be – ”
He cuts himself off, but not quickly enough. Henry stills, buried in Hans and holding himself there. “What do you wish?” he whispers. When Hans moans again and shakes his head, Henry squeezes his hips. “D’you wish it was me?”
Hans trembles like a leaf. It hurts too much to imagine: too humiliating, too demeaning, too wonderful, too perfect.
“D’you wish it was our bedding?” Henry’s voice is almost dazed. “That I was your husband and that you were…my wife?”
“Henry!” Hans gasps, mortified by how high his voice shoots. Heat floods his traitorous body. My girl, Henry had said. My maid.
Henry pulls out, even as Hans cries out at the loss. He turns Hans deftly in his arms, until Hans faces him. “Wouldn't we do it like this?” he asks. He looks surprised again, like he's hearing his own words for the first time. “If we were wed?”
“Hal,” Hans gasps.
“Would you be scared?” Henry’s eyes are shining, twin stars. He begins to rut on Hans’s thigh, in a mindless grind. “Even if I were your choice?”
Of course you're my choice, Hans thinks wildly.
“I'd never hurt you. I’d be so good to you.”
“You would?” Hans asks, wide eyed. His head is spinning, off balance, tumbling. The world is centering on the point of a pin.
Henry nods. “You'd be tight here.” He circles Hans’s entrance with light touch, though Hans is loose from Henry’s cock, and wet from the oil and Henry's loving mouth, and there’s no need to – “But I'd make you so slick, so ready, until you begged me for it.”
“I would not,” Hans retorts, indignant even in this state of mania. “It would be beneath a noble to beg.”
Henry presses his finger into Hans, gently, like it's the first time. “You’re already so wet,” he breathes. Henry looks drunk, eye-bright and swooning.
Hans swells like a wineskin. He wants Henry so much. He yearns for him. He aches for him. How can he keep wanting him so much when they've already had each other, and will keep having each other? What could possibly ever satisfy him?
Could this?
Hans doesn't want to be the man he'll become tomorrow. His wedding becomes a dream, another world. Hans takes a breath, and lets it fall away.
“If it were our marriage,” he says, in a voice he hardly recognizes, “you’d’ve reached too high above your station for me.”
“I know that,” Henry replies, surprising him. “Your uncle wants me dead.”
Hans snorts out a laugh, impossibly. Everything about this is impossible. He shouldn’t be laughing about this. They shouldn’t even be here. Henry shouldn’t be lying in Hans’s embrace at all. But he is. They are. Henry laughs an impossible laugh of his own, and leans down, kissing Hans lightly, nearly chaste.
“But you won me,” Hans murmurs, half in play, and half not.
And Henry, who always knows what to say, nods and whispers, “Now lie back and give yourself to me.”
Henry pushes back in, the familiar stretch of his cock filling Hans anew. Henry kisses him when he does it, deeper and hungrier than before, and when Hans moans, his voice breaks in the middle.
“So sweet,” Henry gasps, kissing Hans’s neck, licking a stripe up it, as he begins to fuck Hans in earnest. “Such a sweet little – ”
Hans reaches between them to grasp at his own cock, red and weeping, bouncing on his stomach in time with Henry’s thrusts. As he strokes, Henry reaches down too, and covers Hans’s hand with his own. Hans watches, eyes huge, breath wild, as they stroke him together, sending fire through his body, the head of his cock jumping through their joined hands. It’s not hidden completely, but…but…
“Hal,” Hans pleads, hardly knowing what he’s begging for.
They’ve fucked face to face before, many times. But it's different now. It feels oddly perverse, and oddly sacred. Henry fucks Hans in the position of the marriage sacrament, kisses Hans on the mouth in time with the thrusts of his cock; Hans spreads his legs to make room for him, open, willing, so willing, giving of his body as freely as any bride.
And then Henry hooks a hand under one of Hans’s knees and spreads him wider, and his thrusts are deeper, sending shocks up Hans’s body. Like a man in a dream, Henry grunts out, “Mine now, really mine…your heart is your dower, and that’s mine.”
“Yours,” Hans cries out, because it’s true. It’s been true since they met, and will be true when they die. Suddenly he’s nearly there, climbing and climbing, his breath punched out of him in half-sobbing bursts. His nails dig into Henry’s shoulders, and claw down his back. Hans thinks: I will not be the only one changed. I will not be the only one claimed.
“What are you to me?” Hans demands, his voice a ruin. “Tell me what you are.”
“Yours,” Henry gasps. “Until my death.” His kisses are off center, sloppy, and his hand on Hans’s cock is clumsy; he’s close, too.
“Your life – ”
“Yes.”
“Your dower – ”
“Yours.”
“Tell me,” Hans repeats, in pieces. He knows the answer. But Henry is so much braver than he. “Tell me, please tell me, please.”
“Your husband.” Henry’s voice breaks. “Joined before God.”
The blasphemy slips out as natural as a breath. It’s as if they’ve pushed past fear and tumbled somewhere else, someplace warm, where the words feel like a balm on aching muscles. The words don’t feel blasphemous here. They feel true, and Hans believes them.
“Husband,” Hans echoes. His voice is thick and tremulous, as though he’s been crying. Has he been crying?
The sun is setting. It illuminates Henry from behind, casting him in God’s light, as he begins to snap his hips faster, harder, pushing both of them forward across the ground. Hans is nearly delirious, pushing up to meet Henry in a frenzy. He throws an arm back, grasping in vain for some purchase, some anchor to keep him from flying out of his body and into the sky. But Henry grabs his hand, threading their fingers together and gripping tight, like he can't bear to let go of him.
“Don’t leave me,” Hans begs. It’s the deepest wish of his heart. It’s all he’s ever wanted. “You’re mine now, you can’t.”
“I won’t.” Henry’s voice is hoarse, stuttering, as overcome as Hans. “I’ll have none but you.” From Henry, who keeps all his promises, it’s nothing less than a holy vow, spoken now in God’s own cathedral.
For whatever reason, that thought – that Henry will never leave him, that Henry is bound to him with ties stronger than any law of men, that at least for this moment they are wed, truly wed in the eyes of God – is what pushes Hans over the edge. And as he loses himself to it, his mind, freed from all his shame and questions and stubborn pride for one instant, betrays him, and he thinks of what would follow; if he were a maid, loved by her husband, begot with child on the wedding night, an heir, a child for Henry –
He comes so hard he sees stars. He comes so hard that his body arches off the ground and he shouts until his throat is raw. He comes so hard that he can’t even hear anything, and only vaguely realizes that Henry is coming too, moaning and grinding into him, as if he could bury himself inside Hans down to the bone.
When it’s over, they collapse into a heap. Hans isn’t sure if he’ll ever be able to move. All he can do is stare over Henry’s shoulder into the canopy of the trees, wide eyed and awestruck, for what could be an hour, or days, or a century.
“Oh,” Hans gasps.
He slowly realizes that Henry is pressing soft kisses to his forehead, drifting over his hairline and his brow and over his cheeks. “Hans,” Henry murmurs, in a choked whisper. “Hans. Hans.”
“Oh,” Hans gasps again. “Holy Christ.”
They lie there together, trembling and fragile, with Henry between Hans’s spread legs. Hans feels their heartbeats change at the same pace, racing and then slowing, as if they have melded together. He begins to run his hand through Henry’s hair, in a repeating, soothing motion. He’d always thought it brown, but there had been red there, and gold, when the light had hit it. They were kingly colors, or perhaps the colors of a saint.
As Hans drifts, and as Henry keeps kissing him and murmuring to him, the sun falls below the skyline. The forest around them comes to life as night falls; Hans hears an owl in the tree above, a rustle of a hare in the underbrush. It's as if he and Henry are the only two people in all the world, and there are no stone walls to hold them, no low ceilings, no barred doors. The wood is oblivious to them, moving and breathing in its steady cycle.
With the hand not in Henry’s hair, Hans mindlessly digs into the dirt, rubbing the dark earth between his fingers. The rich, deep smell of it fills Hans’s head and makes him think strange thoughts. Maybe the forest moves around them uninterrupted because he and Henry are part of it. Theirs is simply one more savage marriage ceremony, amongst God’s beasts. Was that first marriage in Eden so different?
Hans lets out a long breath of pure satisfaction. At the sound, Henry sits up just a little, hair mussed and his face blotchy; he looks, to Hans’s immense pride, a complete wreck. They kiss, long and lingering, as Henry starts to run his fingers over the mess of spend and sweat between them, growing cool and tacky on their skin. Hans jerks and shivers when Henry brushes at his spent cock, sensitive now, but Henry touches him with heartbreaking gentleness.
“There,” Henry says, husky and deep. “Wasn’t so bad, was it? No pain?”
“None,” Hans sighs. The tremor in his voice, the smile on his face – they’re real. When did their game start feeling so real?
Henry rubs his hands up and down Hans’s thighs, smearing the mess even more. But the touch is warm and grounding, and Hans spreads himself wider, unconsciously. “I’d give you more, you know,” Henry murmurs. “Now that you’re open for me.”
“Open for you?”
“Aye, open. Free of your maidenhead.”
Hans stops breathing. Henry looks down, and Hans watches his face as his fingers trail light as air over Hans’s soft cock. Henry's eyes widen, and as he cups his hand over where Hans is – is wet, nearly dripping, his cock soaked and his hole leaking, Henry's lips part as though he's surprised, as if…
“You’ll need me more than once, so you’ll catch.”
“Catch,” Hans repeats, a croak. The world tilts to the left, and some white hot bastard of sin and humiliation locks itself behind Hans’s gut and floods him. Henry, he – he can't have known the thoughts that had gone through his mind as he came, the madness of them, he can't possibly know – unless they had shown themselves, somehow, on Hans's flushed, ruddy face, cracked open –
“Take ,” Henry says. His voice seems to echo in the dark. He hasn't looked away from the wreck he's made of Hans’s body, running his thumbs along his inner thighs, like a man bewitched, like an artisan looking upon his greatest work. “With my child.”
Hans feels drunk, his heart beating so fast that it’s nearly painful. That first surge of lust that he’d pushed against so strongly rolls through him again, and he struggles to think of a reason to fight it. This is a formless world, where things are true and not true, where his desires are pulled from some crack in his heart and start speaking in his voice, without his permission.
Hans, now moving very quickly beyond reason, reaches down between them and finds Henry growing hard already. A thrill goes through him; Henry has always been ready to go again quickly, but never quite this quickly. He cradles Henry's balls, hanging so heavy, and gives them a light squeeze when Henry shudders. “Plenty of strong sons left for me?” Hans asks.
He means it as a tease, something so absurd that they'll both laugh and Hans can get his footing. But there's a half-gasp in his voice, openly wanting and wanton, in this dreaming place where he can say whatever he wants.
In answer, Henry gathers up more of the sticky mess from Hans’s thighs and stomach, and then pulls away to pour more oil onto his fingers. Hans vaguely notices that Henry’s hands are shaking, and he spills half of the little jug when he does it.
Then Henry spits into his own hand for good measure. The sight of it together with the spend of both of them, and the oil – its a wet froth, slick and filthy, and Hans imagines –
“Is that what it looks like?” Hans asks, in a floating voice. Hans never allowed himself the pleasure with any wench, because a nobleman mustn't risk a bastard, but he’s imagined, vividly. “What's it like, to come inside a cunt?”
Henry lets his breath out in a rush, as if he’s been holding it. “Warm,” he whispers. He starts to press all of it – oil, seed, slick, hot wetness – back into Hans, into his swollen, aching hole. Hans throws his head back and welcomes it, sighing, as Henry runs his other hand slowly, possessively, down Hans’s side, and over his hip.
“I could tell you about it,” Henry offers, like a man in a trance.
“Tell me.”
“It’s tight. So tight. No man ever had such a welcome. It’s like coming home.”
Henry fingers him open, rubbing over the sweet nub inside. Hans doesn’t need this; he’s still loose, and Henry could shove right in and take him. Hans won’t be coming again anyway, at least not so soon. But it feels wonderful, and Hans doesn’t care.
“What else?”
“It’s soft inside. So giving to me. Greedy for more, always.”
Hans feels his mind start to…slip away a little. It’s very much like the feeling after sprinting, or after riding a horse as fast as he can: breathless and free, but without the exhaustion. The living murmur of the forest sharpens and dims at the same time, a muffled song, and his world begins to center only on the blunt, clever blacksmith hands on him and inside of him. What skilled hands they are.
And then, Henry, his eyes locked on where his fingers disappear into the pink wetness of Hans’s body, murmurs, “I love this cunt of yours.”
Hans makes a broken sound, and arches into Henry’s touch helplessly.
They hadn’t – they’ve been dancing around it, but they hadn’t –
“Stop it,” Hans moans, not meaning a word. But he has to at least attempt a denial. He can’t fall into this so easily, as if he’s no better than a roadside slut. “Henry.”
Henry sees right through him. “I do,” he insists. His voice is a full octave lower than it usually is. “I’m like a cuntstruck boy. I could die happy inside you.”
Thank Christ for him, and also may hell swallow him the fuck up. Hans tosses his head from side to side, bucking up into Henry’s blunt fingers.
Once he’s said it, it’s like Henry can’t stop. “I told you it was sweet,” he sighs, pumping his fingers in and out, in and out, curling them and pressing down, until Hans starts to see double. “Your sweet little cunny, wet for me, always takes me so easy…”
Hans is going to die. His shame is somehow both sharp and powerless, more fuel than anything. He bucks up again, rutting and rubbing. His cock lies on his thigh, untouched. It's interested, certainly, and swelling; but it’s untouched. It's unimportant. It's in the way.
Henry looks like a man on the brink of a precipice. His mouth is hanging open. “I’d keep you full,” he says, in a dangerous voice. “I’d keep you in my bed and stuff this cunt full of my cock and my seed until you took, until…”
Hans rears up and bites down on Henry’s lip, stopping his awful, horrible, perfect mouth. Henry responds with a moan so deep that Hans can feel it in his chest, and Hans squirms, kicks his legs, tries to free himself.
“Fuck me,” he gasps. He tastes blood, from Henry’s mouth. “Fuck my – ”
Henry hooks an arm under Hans’s back and flips him over, and Hans’s strangled yelp would be mortifying had it been with anyone else. He scrambles onto his hands and knees and arches his back, and the next moment Henry pushes his cock inside him, fast and hard, all the way to the hilt, and Hans yells, falling forward.
Henry presses them back to front, with his hand splayed over Hans’s chest. “Your heart’s beating so fast,” Henry has the nerve to moan, as if Hans is destroying him and not the other way around.
Henry sets a bruising pace, gripping Hans by the shoulder and hip. Hans is still sensitive, tender in the deepest core of his body, with no time to recover, but he relishes the hint of pain. He needs it, demands it, and tries in vain to push back into Henry and match him. Driven by some deep instinct, he shifts and holds himself up with one hand, lifting his leg higher, as if he’s presenting, like some beast in heat.
“Beautiful,” Henry gasps. He sounds as overwhelmed as Hans feels, like his heart is flying out of his mouth and bleeding into the dirt. “So fucking – ”
From this position Hans can't even see his own aching cock. Neither of them can. And oh, God help him, he doesn’t want to. He wants to pretend, and it’s so easy to imagine. He can see Henry fucking into a useless woman’s slit, a whore’s trench –
He gives himself over to the fantasy. “More,” he moans, slurring. “Need more, so I'll…so I'll take.”
“Yes,” Henry hisses, as if he’s triumphant, as if he’s in pain. He clutches Hans so tightly that there will be bruises. “So good – no one’s had this cunt before me.”
“No one,” Hans moans, mindless. “Only – you.”
"It’s mine," Henry groans. “My sweet maid’s.”
Hans is nearly crying, red faced and trembling. Pleasure is mounting again, impossibly. But Hans has heard that women can come over and over, sinful creatures that they are, filled with the wanton lust of Eve. He hopes it's true. He prays for it.
"Tell me what you need," Henry says, voice ravaged.
Hans shakes his head. "I can't – "
"You can. Tell me what you need."
"Fuck – uh. Hal, fuck!"
Henry drags his fingers over Hans’s thighs and his stomach, and holds them up to Hans’s lips. Hans opens his mouth, willing, unthinking; he licks his own seed off of Henry's fingers, and Henry's seed too, licks him clean, moaning at the salt-bitter taste of it.
Henry makes a beautiful punched out sound. But he also slows down, and Hans cries out in genuine heartbreak. He’s so far gone, so tamed, that he can’t even make demands, or threats, or even beg. Instead, he plants both hands on the ground and starts pushing backwards, clumsily fucking himself on Henry’s stupid cock.
“Look at you,” Henry gasps, from a thousand miles away. Hans can barely hear him, splitting himself and jerking back and forth, shameless and uncaring, making little sobbing whines when he does.
“Oh, Christ , Jesus Christ, come here,” Henry moans. He hauls Hans up, gets a hand in his hair and twists his head up and to the side, swallowing Hans’s whimper with a hard, consuming kiss; he gets a hand around his upper arm, and starts slamming into him, pulling Hans back onto his cock with bruising strength. Hans feels his eyes roll back in his head, and beneath the overwhelming force of Henry’s body, he feels fierce joy. Henry has never been this rough with him. Hans has let a wolf out of a cage.
Henry could break his arm. Henry could beat him, choke him. Hans would let him, and would thank him after; he would let Henry do anything. Dear God, anything, anything. “Please,” Hans weeps. “Fill me.”
“Give me your fucking cunt – ‘till you're swollen up, with my – ”
“Hal.”
Henry is thrusting so deep inside that Hans can’t even remember where he ends and Henry begins. Shouldn't Hans be getting looser, like cunts get with use? He feels tighter, like his body is melding itself around Henry, until he’s ruined and spoiled for anyone else, taking on the shape of Henry's cock.
“Put a child in me – ” There are tears running down his cheeks, and his tongue is hanging like a dog's, as he's fucked like a bitch in a kennel. “Keep me full – ”
A snarl of pure possession explodes out of Henry, and he gnaws on the back of Hans’s neck.
Hans imagines how they must look, how he looks, with Henry mounting him, like a woman taken in battle, a war prize. Owned, like a whore is owned, like a bride is taken. Hans is making a high keening wail, his body aflame as the lust and burning builds and builds until his lungs seize up.
“Yours,” Henry is moaning. “Yours, yours, it’s all yours.”
“Fuck me,” Hans pleads.
Henry fucks Hans so hard that his vision runs white at the edges. Hans starts thinking wild, piecemeal things: galloping faster than he ever has as the world falls away, sunrises, lapping the blood of stigmata from a saint’s hands, Henry’s hands –
His voice breaks, shatters. “Fuck my cunt!”
Henry makes a wounded noise, like he’s been cleaved in two. He doubles over and slams into Hans and comes and comes, spills and spills, over and over, ramming the overworked point of pleasure inside Hans without relief. Hans wails and sobs, and his scattered thoughts crystallize into - carrying Henry's child, filled with Henry, bred like a bitch, like a wife. He comes a second time, wrenched out of him brutally, his neglected cock spurting all over him and into the dirt, and he's too hot, on fire, melted steel, like Henry has laid him out on his anvil, hammered him into a new shape, and –
You may fuck a whore but never love her. Oh God, my God, let me be different.
Hans comes back to his body, heaving and gasping. Henry’s open mouth is pressed to Hans’s shoulder, and he’s jerking softly into Hans in the aftershocks, as Hans lets out soft, weeping breaths. Hans’s whole body is loose, overwarm, and the only thing tethering him to the earth is Henry’s arms, wrapped around him tight and possessive. Henry is shaking, from his arms to his thighs.
And Henry is…is…isn’t stopping. He’s still hard. Hans’s half-lidded eyes fly open as Henry groans, moving faster.
Oh Christ, Henry is fucking his seed back into Hans, back into his – his cunt, wet and slick, making obscene noises. Drops of it are leaking out, as Henry starts bucking into him, more frantic than before, imprecise and delirious.
“Yes,” Hans sobs, beyond madness.
Henry falls forward. He presses Hans down, prone, and fucks him so deeply that the sounds forced out of Hans are unrecognizable – he’s never heard them, not even from animals. "M'lovely, sweetheart, dearcunt, m’girl," Henry moans.
Hans feels like his mind takes a tumble off a cliff as Henry rubs his face blindly into the back of his neck, rutting into him. Then Henry hooks his arm around Hans’s middle and hoists him up, so that Hans sinks face down into the ground, like a holy pilgrim would before an altar.
“Go on, lift your cunny for me.”
“I can’t,” Hans cries, weak. But he tries anyway, tries to be good. Henry takes the new leverage and uses Hans as he likes, pounding into him, and it’s – not even about coming anymore, or pleasure. Hans becomes the vessel for Henry’s desires, and he falls into an oblivion so complete that only surrender remains to him, with freedom at last at its end.
“H-Husband,” he weeps.
The word snaps a tether. Henry cries out and comes, pushing Hans down by the back of his neck and pumping into his spent body, and it’s too much and not enough, raw, too sensitive, high and sharp and too bright, endless. The world becomes nothing but blinding, pure sensation, and Hans can do nothing but feel. His poor soft cock gives a twitch, beyond pain and beyond pleasure. Hans would scream, if he was capable.
Henry comes and comes. There's so much of it that Hans feels warm wetness running down the back of his thighs, and Hans can only lie there and take him, sobbing, whimpering, drooling, eyes unfocused.
Hans is shaking and twitching uncontrollably by the time Henry finishes, and Henry tumbles on top of him, draping the whole weight of his body over Hans’s back. Henry is just slightly shorter, but broader than Hans, and heavier; Hans would have spiraled away, would have left his body and tumbled into the heavens, if Henry were not here. Henry’s warm body presses him down and down until Hans feels the pulse of the earth beneath them, and begins to feel his own limbs again, and remembers his own name again. His breathless sobs begin to ease, and for the first time all day, and perhaps in his whole life, his mind goes quiet.
Henry doesn’t seem keen to move, either. He’s still sheathed inside of Hans, warm and safe, and Hans has a sudden desperate need. Stay in me, he thinks. He can’t find the words, can’t make his mouth work. He thinks he’ll die if Henry pulls out of him. Stay inside me, stay inside…
Henry doesn't move.
He stays, running his lips back and forth across Hans’s neck; as a wolf might kiss its mate, or as a stallion might calm its mare. Henry always knows, somehow, what Hans wants; or maybe, they have always wanted the same thing. It’s a lovely thought, and Hans swims in it. They lie there, joined, until Henry’s cock grows soft inside of Hans, and their bodies grow still.
At length, Henry pushes himself up. He pets Hans with a warm, rough hand, running a soothing touch down his spine. Hans whimpers and sighs, yielding as a lamb, too far gone to be ashamed.
“You all right?” Henry asks, tenderness itself.
Hans nods. At least, he tries to. It’s more of a vague roll of his neck. His mumbled reply is vague, too, but clearly, deeply pleased. He thinks Henry’s name might be tangled up in it.
Henry blows out a long, slow breath. He rubs Hans up and down a few times, grounding and gentle, and pushes his hand up into Hans’s hair; he takes a handful, pulls very softly, releases, and then runs his hand back down. Hans finds his breath is growing deeper, more even. He realizes that Henry must be soothing them both.
Then Henry gently, so gently, takes Hans by the hips, and urges him up. Hans, exhausted, doesn’t bother to move his upper half. He’s arse up in the air, uncaring, still warm and floating in this place where he is desired.
Henry spreads Hans wide, holding him open as if examining him. Hans imagines how he must look, shuddering with delight: pink and swollen and stretched out, like a wet, well-loved cunt in truth.
And then Henry leans in and – oh, God, kisses him, right there, on his tender hole filled with Henry’s seed, like he would kiss Hans's mouth.
Hans gasps just as Henry lets out a low moan, the vibration shooting bolts of sensation up his limp body. Henry licks inside, feasting from him, and Hans can only lie there, letting him. The sounds Henry is making are reverent, broken things, muffled and anguished.
Hans squirms with both joy and protest, because he needs it inside of him, he needs...
Then Henry’s hands are on his thighs, swiping through the messy streaks from both of them, together, and Hans gives a low, pained cry when Henry starts gently pressing the whole tangled slickness into Hans with his fingers, replacing what he’d just kissed away.
Then Henry places his hands on Hans’s hips and holds him in place. “Stay just like that,” he whispers. He’s breathless. “So you’ll take.”
Hans weeps with relief. He'd thought that Henry would end their game after he came, but they get to stay in this warm, wonderful place a little longer. It makes him sink even further into this new satisfaction; there is an odd pride in it, and a peace.
He lifts his hips even more, despite the ache, and imagines himself again: catching, taking, heavy with child. And this time it's not just the swell of Henry’s child that he imagines, but the world that it implies: where he could be loved by Henry openly, taken and fucked outside in rough and wild places whenever they want; where he could be filled and fulfill and fill in turn without fear; where he could – where they could be –
“Husband,” Hans moans. It's a long, yearning thing, rung out like a rag. “My husband.”
The whole world has gone hazy and soft, but even in his half aware state, with one foot in dreams, Hans hears Henry's breath catch.
“Aye,” Henry replies. His voice is warm with longing. Oh, Hans thinks. He loves me. “Aye, I am.”
-
The next day, they fuck again in the morning and arrive late, and everyone assumes that Hans has a blinding hangover. They’re not wrong. The fact that he was drunk on Henry's cock and not on wine is a minor detail.
And so, unable to run any longer, Hans is washed and dressed in stuffy too-tight clothing that feels as much like a noose as the real thing had. Hans keeps himself sane by remembering that Henry has left his mark upon him in more ways than one; even when the smell of him is washed away, Hans feels the soreness of Henry’s bruising touch in every step, imprinted inside of him like a brand.
Henry has him one more time, quickly, bending him over in a dark alcove, when he's supposedly giving Hans a private encouraging speech to get him to the altar. Henry shoves his fingers into Hans’s hungry mouth to wet them, because they don’t have time for anything else, but Hans is still loose – fuck, how could he not be – and Henry’s cock slides in shockingly easily. The intrusion still burns without proper seeing too, but Hans worships that pain, because this time, he embraces the fantasy immediately: a young bride and husband, unable to wait until they’re wed, desperate for one another and stealing away – he would be a virgin, and it would hurt, but the pleasure is so much greater, as he gives himself to his husband, his husband – her –
Hans throws his hand over his mouth at the last second to muffle his cry, and Henry groans into the silk of Hans’s shoulder, spilling into his aching cunt.
Afterwards, Henry keeps his hands on Hans’s hips, anchoring him in place. “Clamp your legs together,” he says. “Keep it inside. When you stand in front of God, in His house, I want you to feel me still.”
Henry runs a finger down the seam of him, where Hans is so raw. “And then when you bed her,” Henry says, in a rough, shaking voice, “Think of me.”
It doesn't sound like an order. Henry is begging him. “Keep it inside,” he whispers, in a mirror of Hans and his own ravenous wanting.
Hans feels his knees buckle, and he laughs out loud. He can’t not.
Hans is entering this next marriage already an adulterer, and a bigamist. They are hardly his worst sins.
It's all a bit of a blur after that. Hans knows that he makes his greetings, his half hearted excuses. He knows that he's herded like a breeding steer with the rest of the procession for the church blessing. He knows that the faces of saints and angels look down on him like heavenly jailors. He knows that he sees Hanush’s stupid smug smile. He sees the bride.
He's suddenly not sure he can do this.
Then he sees Henry in the crowd. He’s dressed in blue, understated and unobtrusive, as if he’s not the center upon which the whole world revolves. Only Hans knows what he’s just been doing, and how his body is damp with sweat beneath his clothes. Only Hans knows of the scratches down his back and arms, the evidence left behind from Hans and his passion.
Can Henry taste Hans, locked away in his mouth? Can he smell Hans on him still, filling his senses? Does he remember what Hans did, and what he said? Will he think of Hans tonight, when Hans thinks of him?
With the painted face of Christ watching him, Hans feels, distinctly, a drop of damp wetness slip down his inner thigh; like a warm cunt weeping with desire, a secret only he knows; like a bride, waiting to wed a man who pleases her.
Infuriating, intolerable, beautiful Henry catches his eye…and winks.
And thou glad Genius, in whose gentle hand,
The bridale bowre and geniall bed remaine,
Without blemish or staine,
And the sweet pleasures of theyr loves delight
With secret ayde doest succour and supply,
Till they bring forth the fruitfull progeny,
Send us the timely fruit of this same night.
- From "Epithalamion" by Edmund Spenser