Chapter Text
It had been a mistake for Ivar to show such vulnerability to Heahmund. To tell him that he had spared him because he was jealous of him, because he admired him as a warrior, for his strength and his wholeness.
It had been clear then, what he had to do. No choice at all. Even as he asked God for guidance, head raised to the dark ceiling of his prison, fervent pleas trembling on his lips, he had known what to do. Asked for forgiveness instead, for mercy upon his unclean soul, and for the sins he would soon heap upon himself.
Light streamed in through the gaps in the wooden grids of the windows, and it felt like benediction, like God was with him, rays cradling his face tenderly like pale ethereal fingers or angels’ wings, and he knew it was the right choice.
In Ivar he had seen the face of the devil, but Heahmund was God’s righteous sword, and he would strike down any pagan that God sent his way, would be more than willing to dirty his hands with their foul blood. He was already a sinner, weak to the temptations of the flesh and susceptible to pride, the most egregious of the seven deadly sins, so how could he refuse when God pointed him in the direction of his newest foe, demanding from Heahmund that he lower himself further so he could be level with the snake of Eden and sink his teeth into its heart?
God save the heathen, for Heahmund knew Ivar wanted him.
And he would make sure it was going to be his downfall.
*
And so, later, when they came for him, he resisted little, letting them drag him roughly to his feet and herd him through the godless heathen village to jeering faces and insults, many hands pushing and pulling at him like they had in York, yanking him down screaming and fighting from Ivar’s horse, but now urging him to go faster, seeking to unbalance him.
But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him fall. Not this time.
Around him the stink of rancid fat and blood and rotten fish was overwhelming. His lip curled in disgust. He wouldn’t have expected any better from a place the heathens called home.
‘Christian’ they spat as though it was a dirty word. It wasn’t anything like the way Ivar said it though—so peculiar, neither an insult or a mockery, something hungry in his eyes as he smiled at Heahmund like he meant to devour him.
Despite his stalwart attempts at staying upright, a final push sent him sprawling face-first into the filthy ground before Ivar, a mockery of his prostration before God. He tasted mud and the fishy iron tang of whale blood. The heathens’ laughter reached an uproarious crescendo. One hand curled in the wet ground before he gracelessly lifted himself to his feet, coming eye to eye with the devil himself.
Ivar leaned back on his stool at the front of a shack, only looking amused. Once more he gave him that ultimatum, the tip of a knife digging into the leather over his chest as it dragged down, his unnaturally blue eyes burning holes into Heahmund’s face with their intensity.
And Heahmund knew what he had to do.
He deliberately let his gaze sink, then raised his eyes, so he could look at Ivar through his lashes. The effect was immediate: Ivar’s breathing increased and his pupils widened slightly.
“Why don’t you give me the knife?” Heahmund’s tone held the hint of a challenge, one that he knew Ivar would not be able to resist. His smile was nothing short of a dare.
A brief tightening around Ivar’s mouth, the flash of something in his eyes as he searched Heahmund’s face before a smile of his own broke out on his face. He flipped the knife, handle-first. Heahmund could run him through with it, but he wouldn’t get far, not with the mob at his back, surrounding them from all sides, and Ivar knew it too, judging by the smirk on his face. It grew wider when Heahmund took the blade with his bound hands and turned it against his own chest, eyes never once straying from Ivar’s.
The heathen strained forward to see better, as eager as a child, when Heahmund turned to face the crowd and the man yelling abuses at him, calling him to do it, calling him a coward, spittle flying out of his mouth.
Heahmund looked at him calmly for a moment. Then he rammed the knife deeply into the man’s neck and watched him bleed out on the ground.
It was deathly silent by the time he turned back around to Ivar. Laughing and clapping, smiling widely from ear to ear, he looked like a madman.
“I think he will fight with us!”
As the crowd cheered, Heahmund threw the knife to the side, repressing a cold smile of his own.
It was easy, almost too easy. He had seen the way Ivar had reacted when Heahmund cut his people down, going so far as to offer his own horse when Heahmund had lost his. So deep did his perversion run.
Ivar thought this was his victory. It was not.
It was Heahmund’s.
*
The lack of a collar or chains was refreshing. It seemed that now that the heathens were convinced he would wield his sword in their cause, they no longer felt a need to restrain him. Even Ivar seemed pleased enough with Heahmund’s decision and the spectacle he made of it that he let Heahmund roam around freely, if under the watchful eyes of his men. Heahmund took advantage of this, walking through the village, scouting it out, to then barge into Ivar’s quarters after supper, pushing past the guards with little trouble.
“Heahmund!” Ivar said. He was sitting on the edge of his bed and had just finished removing the heavy metal braces from his legs. “Whatever brings you to my quarters?”
When Heahmund didn’t say anything, Ivar continued, “Oh right! I never told you where you could stay for the night. My bad. But I was thinking you should sleep in my quarters anway. What do you say? You could lie on the ground, at the foot of my bed, like a dog, or…” his head rolled to the side, languidly, as his hooded eyes roved up and down Heahmund’s body, “...you could warm my bed instead.”
At the last, his eyes snapped back up to Heahmund’s face, leering at him in an obscene smile clearly meant to provoke. For a moment, Heahmund was reminded of the first time he saw him, in the rain, in York, sitting in front of his upturned chariot without a care in the world, face painted red with blood, laughing and clapping his hands at the carnage that happened all around him. At that moment Heahmund had no doubt that he was looking at the incarnation of the devil himself, the red devil, and pointed his sword at him. Then Ivar spotted him, and he had stuck out his tongue in a similarly obscene fashion, with the blood pooling in the hollow of it, as though daring Heahmund to taste it from the source of evil—the devil’s tongue—itself.
Ivar watched him expectantly. It was obvious that he wanted to see how Heahmund would react, maybe with offense, anger or even disgust. But this time, the joke was on him.
Heahmund pushed Ivar’s chest hard, sending him sprawling backwards on the furs with a muffled shout. By the time he got his bearings, Heahmund was already seated in his lap and had started undoing the straps of his armor.
Ivar’s eyes were flinty, his hand had found the hilt of a knife where it lay gleaming in the fur with his fingers not yet fully curled around the handle. He bared his teeth.
“What—do you think you are doing?”
Heahmund calmly continued divesting himself of his armor and clothes, dropping piece after piece to the floor. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
Ivar propped himself up on his elbows, the wary look so out of place on his face that usually radiated nothing but the utmost confidence, alight with a madman’s fire—now replaced with shadows and smoke. “I don’t know.”
The end of his sentence ended with a lilt, sounding almost like a question. His fingers danced up and down the handle of the knife, the muscles in his forearm tensing and untensing, as though he was debating whether to stab Heahmund and have it be done and over with, or wait it out and see what would happen next.
Feeling merciful, Heahmund decided to make the choice a little easier for Ivar. He put his hands on the firm shoulders, caressing them as he leaned forward until his lips were level with Ivar’s ear.
“I know you want me,” he breathed, “Ivar.” His lashes brushed the other’s skin as he looked up. Ivar trembled.
A series of emotions flitted over his face, from arousal to fear to absolute bewilderment. He seemed almost angry even; there was no doubt he knew he was being manipulated and played with. Ivar wasn’t a fool after all, that much Heahmund knew, the memory of York and his utter defeat at the hands of the heathens still fresh on his mind.
Ivar’s internal struggle continued for a few seconds, but Heahmund could pinpoint the exact moment he snapped—growling and grabbing the back of Heahmund’s hair, wrenching his head backwards and forcing him to bare his neck in an unnatural stretch. Heahmund’s pulse jumped and Ivar affixed his mouth there, falling over it hungrily.
Heahmund had noticed Ivar watching his neck from the beginning. Back in York, in the midst of battle while Ivar directed everything from a higher vantage point, and when he had been chained to that pole; or even in this godless heathen land, when Ivar had forced him to his knees and yanked his head back when he started praying in front of a king Ivar wanted to impress.
He had attributed Ivar’s obsession to the fact that his armor usually covered everything, leaving only his pale neck exposed, vulnerable to any arrow or blade.
If Ivar left a mark there, everyone would see it.
Breathing a little heavier, Heahmund tilted his head to the side for easier access and tugged Ivar’s hand down to his waist. He got the hint and helped get rid of the rest of his clothing as Heahmund pulled Ivar’s shirt over his head, and then there was nothing separating their skin any longer.
When Heahmund finally sank down on Ivar, his hands were gripping Heahmund’s hips hard enough to bruise. He was as tense as a drawn bowstring, his mouth had fallen open and he was panting like he could not get enough air into his lungs, pupils expanded wide enough to swallow the unholy blue of his eyes. Then he grunted and gritted his teeth because Heahmund could feel him twitching inside him already, threatening to spill early. But even as his nails dug into Heahmund’s flesh, trying to force his hips into stillness and fighting to get a semblance of control, he held Heahmund’s gaze, as though he considered it a sin to look away even for one moment.
Returning the scrutiny, Heahmund leaned forward to slowly lick the bead of sweat that trailed down Ivar’s chest, feeling him shiver as he did so.
He wanted to laugh.
Ivar was so young and inexperienced. By the way he reacted, so sensitive, overeager and almost clumsy, Heahmund was sure no one had shown him such pleasure before. And he knew the truth:
Ivar was no devil. He was just a lonely, sad little boy with delusions of grandeur.
Heahmund settled back on his heels, nails lightly scratching down Ivar’s chest and over a hardened nipple. Ivar cursed. “Need another moment?” Heahmund purred.
In lieu of an answer, Ivar only smiled tightly, lifting Heahmund’s hips and dropping them at the same time his own slammed up. As Heahmund doubled over with a bitten-off groan, Ivar turned his head so he could brush his lips over his ear. “I think the question is, do you?”
The first round was hard and fast. So was the second. For the third Ivar flipped their positions, supporting himself on only one hand as the other pressed warmly into the small of Heahmund’s back, lifting him up flush against Ivar’s body. Heahmund had his legs wrapped around Ivar’s waist as the other only used his hips and his upper body strength to drive into him over and over again.
They fucked well into the night, and when morning came they resumed like they had never stopped.
That was until Hvitserk walked in on them. Luckily for him, he came at the end of another round. Ivar and Heahmund laid on their backs, waiting for the sweat on their skin to cool down. For a moment, Hvitserk only gaped. Then Ivar rolled onto his side on his elbows and smirked.
“You got something worthwhile to say? I’m rather busy… as you can see.” He inclined his head towards Heahmund, hand spreading out in a wide flourish.
Even with his forearm covering his eyes, Heahmund could feel Hvitserk’s gaze on his skin. With a sigh he lifted his arm and stared back until Hvitserk had to look away.
Ivar laughed, looking delighted at this exchange. “There, there. The Christian won’t bite, will you?”
Heahmund had no idea what he said, speaking in his strange native tongue, but had no doubt it was nothing good. He sneered.
Ivar laughed some more, patting Heahmund’s flank fondly, then he turned back to Hvitserk. He raised a brow. “Well?”
Hvitserk huffed. “It reeks in here. You really need to wash up. I’ll send a slave girl to prepare a bath. Harald wants to talk to you.”
Now both brows shot up. “Again? I thought he would have had enough after the last time.”
But Hvitserk didn’t provide his brother with more information; he only paused to look at them one last time, seeming almost perplexed, before leaving.
They were lounging in the bed when the slave girl came, visibly startled when she saw them but quickly getting down to work. She set the wooden bathtub down in the corner of the room and left a few times to get enough hot water to fill the vessel. All the while she kept shooting glances at them, to which Ivar giggled. From time to time he would whisper things in English to Heahmund, using a filthy tone while in fact discussing banalities just to mess with her. Heahmund almost pitied the slave girl, but she was a heathen and did not deserve his pity.
As soon as she was done, the girl left in a hurry, barely remembering to bow to Ivar as she scuttled out the door.
Heahmund was the first to get out of bed. There was a resounding smack as Ivar slapped his ass. Heahmund bit back a sigh, shooting Ivar an irritated look while the latter laughed and appreciatively watched his seed trickle down Heahmund’s thighs.
But then the laughter trailed off and Ivar leaned forward, expression turning strangely pensive as he laid his cheek on his folded arms.
“You are full of surprises, Bishop Heahmund.” There was the flash of something in his eyes before it was suppressed and he was back to smiling cheekily again.
“I thought priests didn’t have sex.”
“They don’t. They take a vow of celibacy, but I am rather… lax about it.”
Ivar snorted. “You don’t say.” He tilted his head, the corners of his mouth lifting. “But I understand why you wouldn’t keep your vow. I wouldn’t either.”
Like a snake he then slithered down the bed, managing to make it look both awkward and graceful. Once more Heahmund marveled at the strength of his arms, pulling along the deadweight of his legs as they dragged behind him, seeming almost like they were not a part of his body, disproportionately fragile and underdeveloped compared to the rest of him.
Heahmund had felt the strength of his arms first-hand, never once seeming to tire as they lifted him over and over again to then pull him back down on his cock, or when they held up his own weight, hand buried in the fur next to Heahmund’s head as he powerfully thrust into his body.
And he felt the phantom of that strength, still, on his hips where dark purple bruises had developed. Earlier, Heahmund had woken up to Ivar admiring them, fitting his fingers over them to see if they were a perfect match (which of course they were), and he’d squeezed possessively when he saw that Heahmund was awake too. In his eyes there had been satisfaction, like a cat’s that was bathing in the sun.
Staring at the steaming wooden tub, Ivar’s brow furrowed as he craned his neck and tried to gauge the size. “Do you think we’ll both fit in there?”
“Let’s find out.”
The corner of Ivar’s mouth ticked up and the look in his eyes grew hungry. “I like the way you think, Heahmund.”
It was a tight fit. Water sloshed over the side to the floor for the slaves to mop up later. Everything was hot and slick and wet as their bodies undulated against each other in the limited space, Ivar’s palms unerringly finding Heahmund’s hips like they were made just for his hands.
Ivar threw his head back and Heahmund placed his fingers around his throat, watching as the other fell apart underneath him. He could strangle him, or push his head down underneath the water to drown him; Ivar was at a disadvantage in this narrow space and weighed down by the body above him. But that would be too easy. Heahmund wanted to ruin him, make the heathen pay for his transgressions against God, slowly, painfully—wanted the last look on his face to be one of the deepest betrayal, gurgling and drowning on his own blood, while Heahmund pulled his sword out from his chest where it had pierced his heart.
His teeth scraped over Ivar’s pulse point, lethal, as he gazed up at Ivar from underneath his lashes.
“Heahmund,” Ivar gasped.
Needless to say, they ended up letting King Harald wait for a long time.