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She had always been the one to initiate when it came to their bed. Though he had asked her to marry him, Lagertha was often the one to take charge in their marriage bed. Ragnar had his moments, of course, when arguments became heated and physical and suddenly there were teeth and lips and tongue and touching, and then she was against the wall and he was still wearing half his clothing, but they didn’t care because they needed to be together right now, and they clawed at each other like animals until she was bruised and sore from their fucking. Those times were memorable, and she enjoyed them just as much, but she initiated things much more often. When he came home from a raid, those were her favorite times. He would be so tired that he would crawl into bed and lie on his back, and she would mount him, and it was only a matter of time before she had him writhing and begging for her until she obliged. They both slept better for it.
Then there came the priest. She had been angry when Ragnar had chosen to leave her alone to sail west. It was the adventure of a lifetime, and one that she had so craved, and he had just fucking told her no. And then he had gone and brought her back a slave. And not just a slave, but a foreign slave that looked like he could be broken very easily. She had scowled when Ragnar left the shivering mess with her as he went to work the fields with Bjorn. Gyda was off on an errand, and Athelstan, which is what she was able to learn was his name, was left to sit on his mat as Lagertha puzzled over what to do with him.
She ran her household without slaves. A wife, a mother, a famous shield maiden, she did not need slaves to do what she needed done. But he was going to have to be of some use, if he was to stay in their home and eat their food. She looked him over curiously. He was not strong, not very good to work the fields, and he did not seem very interested in fighting. She supposed he could help with the children, and the menial tasks, but she had them well covered, and the children barely needed her for anything but training anymore.
“What skills do you have?” she asked him suddenly, her rough voice breaking the silence. He looked up, chancing making eye contact with her for a few seconds before glancing back down at his cross. “I can read and write in several languages. And I can work a garden and I know how to draw.” He said softly, almost ashamed that he could not tell her more.
She hummed in thought for a moment, picking at a thread in the hem in her bodice. An idea came to her, and damn what Ragnar thought when he would hear of it later. “You will teach me. To read and write. In my language, and then in yours.” She could read and write enough to know what she needed to learn, but hadn’t done so in years, and if he was skilled, then she might as well make use of it.
He looked surprised, but nodded in agreement. “Do you have any books?” he asked tentatively. These were heathens, and the only book he had was gospel, and he did not want to anger them with the word of god, but of course, she shook her head. He swallowed, glancing back up at her. “Do you have something I can write on? And ink? Or some charcoal would suffice.” He said this quickly, as a request would offend her. But she only nodded and went to fetch the things they would need. Soon enough, they were sitting side by side, speaking quietly, repeating sounds and words over and over until they had no meaning, and the characters on the pages were more than just lines.
Ragnar and the children came home to find them this way and they stopped. They ate and the children were sent to bed. And the priest was sent to his mat as Ragnar placed his arms around his woman and took her to bed. They had each other nude in a manner of moments, but then Lagertha caught a glimpse of blue. Athelstan’s mat was much too close for his liking, and what he was witnessing, it wasn’t a sin because they were married, but he felt a deep pit of shame form in his stomach when he could not turn away from her searching gaze.
“Come and join us, priest.” She smirked, her voice like honey dripping over the sweet apple that had cast Eve from Eden, he thought. Temptations, he sighed and closed his eyes, trying to remove the sinful thoughts from his mind. After a moment he shook his head, laying down on his mat, turning his back to them and offering up silent prayers for absolution as Ragnar pulled his wife into bed and on top of him. They fucked to the sound of the priest’s prayers for forgiveness, and came together to his fevered Amen.
It went like this for months. Some days the priest would stay with Ragnar, learning what he could do in the fields. He was surprisingly useful, with a great deal of knowledge on how to “garden” more efficiently, and their crop would be noticeably better come harvest time. He befriended the man eventually, and found strength he did not know he was capable of, and his muscles became firm with use. He surprised one day to find that he did not ache after a long day of plowing, and the barest hint of pride sneaked into his mind when he saw his biceps begin to form, hard and supple under pale skin. He didn’t even mind when he reached up and felt his hair growing in. It kept him warmer and protected his scalp from the sun on days when he worked with Ragnar. He aspired to be a man that Ragnar might clap on the back after a hard day’s work, as he did with his brother.
Other days he would stay solely with Lagertha, teaching her his language, and the culture of his world. She was an eager student, and he enjoyed teaching her. Those days quickly became his favorites, filled with laughter and learning and ale. She taught him about their customs and told him of her life before Ragnar, and he was in awe of them at first. They may be heathens, and he their prisoner, but he grew to understand, even think it was beautiful. Their family was beautiful, even in its destruction, because they were still warriors, and he still saw them in their natural, ready-for-battle, state. And he found that a small axe fit his hand very well, and when raiders tried to attack the home, he joined Lagertha and Bjorn and Gyda in defending it.
That was the first evening she touched him. When the children were safe, and Ragnar had gone to the Earl to discuss why he had been attacked, Lagertha and Athelstan sat at the hearth reading. Her hand strayed to his thigh and he took it as a comfort. They were both still living and intact, and the touch was not unwelcome, though it made him tremble slightly. He glanced up at her shyly, his blue eyes alight with the fire he had built for them to read by. And she, in the way she always did, initiated something more. She cupped his chin and brought him closer, closer, close enough to brush her lips against his, because he was here, and she had been worried about him, but he was still alive, and she was so glad for that.
Ragnar walked in to find them this way, locked in a gentle embrace, Athelstan trembling like a newborn and Lagertha tangling her fingers in his unruly curls. When the man sat beside his wife, the priest pulled away, ashamed. He had broken a commandment. Coveting what belonged to another, because what was adultery if not coveting another man’s wife? But Ragnar only smiled and cupped his chin, much like Lagertha had, and turned his head to face them, before he pressed a kiss to his lips. Ragnar’s lips were much different than Lagertha’s. Where hers were soft and full, though scattered with scars from too many cold winters and being chapped, his were rough, firmer somehow, as the rest of him was. Athelstan could not stop his shaking. A part of his mind, the part that still wore a monk’s robes and shaved his head, screamed. This was wrong, it shouted, wrong wrong wrong for so many reasons. But that voice was silenced when Ragnar gripped his hand, and the hand of his wife and pulled them both into their bed.
He had seen and heard them so many times before, but to be on this side of things, to touch and taste as well as hear and see was heaven. How could God punish him for appreciating the art that was Lagertha’s body, or the music that was Ragnar’s moan when his neck was sucked. He didn’t know how, but soon enough they were all nude, and his shaking had gotten worse, if that was possible, and he didn’t know who’s hands were who’s, but they were touching and touching and oh.
Lagertha pressed a light kiss to the spot just over his groin, and his breath hitched while Ragnar captured the sigh with a gentle nip to his lower lip. And then, oh God, she had her mouth on him and it was too much all at once and he couldn’t help but arch in and out her mouth, trying to get away from the overwhelming sensation while simultaneously trying to take more of the sinful pleasure she was giving him. Ragnar kept a gentle, but firm hold on his hips, keeping him still after that. And then Lagertha withdrew, crawling up his body to kiss him again, and he tentatively wrapped his fingers in her long hair.
They were everywhere at once, and Athelstan was helpless, trying to keep up with their motions. For a moment it was just the two of them above him, kissing in that familiar way that old lovers do, with efficiency and familiarity and passion before they turned back to him. “What do you know of fucking, Priest?” Ragnar asked, his hand creeping down the younger man’s side, pausing to play at his hip as his wife pressed her tongue against a hard nipple. “N-not as m-much as either of you.” He gasped out as he felt a hint of teeth scrape against puckered flesh. Ragnar chuckled. “Then we shall teach you. Learn well, my Priest.” And his hand moved to wrap around the other’s cock, hard and aching, and he began to stroke maddeningly slow.
“How would you have us, husband?” Lagertha asked as she took a breath, her mouth half pressed against the skin of Athelstan’s belly. “He has never had a woman, nor man.” Ragnar responded conversationally, as if he did not have a former monk writhing on the bed beneath him, and a cock in his hand. “He likes you more still, I think, and I’ve had your pleasures many times. Let us reward him for such good service these months past.” Lagertha smirked and nodded, stealing a heated kiss from her husband before straddling the monk’s hips, seating herself on his belly and leaning own to whisper in his ear. “Let me teach you of our ways. You have shown me yours. It is your turn to be the student.” He whimpered, actually fucking whimpered when Ragnar moved to hold his cock in place, just so Lagertha could lower herself onto it.
Athelstan gasped and his back arched off the bed, driving into her warmth, and he saw stars. This was heaven. He’d died and reached heaven, and they had been his absolution. But then she started to move, rolling her hips and he was resurrected, brought back from the dead with a loud moan. His hands went to her hips and gripped hard enough to leave finger shaped bruises there. She only chuckled and threw her head back, gesturing for her husband. Ragnar settled on his knees on Athelstan’s side, and the woman took one of the priest’s hands from her hip, and wrapped it with hers around Ragnar’s cock. She stopped moving momentarily to school him in how to touch another man, how to rub and stroke and pull flushed skin to make her warrior moan in pleasure. Once they had set a pace, and Ragnar was fucking into their hands, Lagertha started rocking her hips with purpose against Athelstan’s.
A sharp spark of heat started to pool in his belly and he looked up at the Viking woman with something akin to panic. He could not know what the prelude to an orgasm felt like, but she recognized the way his body seized and she nodded, wordlessly assuring him that all would be well, trust us, it’s alright, my priest, fall and we will catch you. And that was all he needed. He shuddered violently and came with a shout in a language that they did not understand, and his vision went white around the edges before his world went completely dark.
When he came to, Lagertha was lying on his left side, her head on his chest, and Ragnar lay to his right, and he had somehow made his way under the priest, so that Athelstan’s head rested on a pillow made of the other man. He was sticky and sore and sweating, but satisfied in a way he had never thought possible. He was painted by the releases of his….lovers? Masters? Friends? And he vaguely remembers the moans of a woman over him, and the grunts of the man next to him, and the warmth that followed. Lagertha was the first to notice that he seemed capable of speech first and she kissed his jaw lightly. “Are you well?” He could only smile serenely and press a gentle kiss to the top of her head. Ragnar stirred and chuckled, the sound rumbling in his chest. He pressed a gentle kiss to the mess of curls that were growing in where Athelstan’s bald patch used to be. “There is still a great deal more for you to learn, my priest. But you are an eager student, I do not think it will take long.”
Lagertha rolled her eyes and kissed the younger man again. Athelstan was left to ponder what he had fallen into. As a monk, he was not meant to indulge in sins of the flesh, and he had just done so with two married people, and he had enjoyed it. How could something so good, and beautiful be condemned by a merciful God? The former monk shook his head, clearing it of thoughts of God and replacing them with thoughts of the beautiful people who he was sandwiched between, the sound of their sleepy breathing lulling him to sleep. He would puzzle over this more when he was less tired. They would sleep wrapped up in each other for now, Lagertha’s leg draped over Athelstan’s thigh to touch her husband’s, and Ragnar’s arm underneath the priest’s head, his reach long enough that his hand tangled in his wife’s long hair. The promise of more times was the last thought Athelstan had, and it made him smile as he finally drifted off into sleep, and he was finally home.