romance writing prompt: hansry brushing dirt off their face…….. 😳
for the romance prompts
hansry/1.5k/G
“That’s it Henry, I cannot go another step!”
Henry turns in time to see Hans collapse into the grass, long limbs sprawled out. His chest heaves beneath the stained pourpoint, stolen off a dead bandit. It’s too small in the chest. With every breath his takes the leather ties strain. He’ll be lucky if they make it to Trosky before the dried out leather pops apart.
With a grunt Henry adjusts the bindle on his shoulder. “Your noble arse can’t make it up a hill without collapsing?” he teases. “Maybe this is a sign you oughta spend less time on that horse and more walking around like the rest of us peasants.”
“My noble arse took a blade to the belly for you. Or have you already forgotten my heroics?” Hans asks.
“Aye, they’ll put it in songs sung across every tavern in Bohemia, I reckon.” He nudges at Hans’ hip with the toe of his boot. “At least get over beneath the tree and get out of the sun.”
Hans shakes his head. His golden hair is filthy with the sweat of his fever. It falls across his forehead in clumps and yet he’s still radiant, somehow, as if the nobility of him cannot be hidden under any layer of muck.
“No. I told you, I can’t move any further. You get down here and sit with me.”
The grass rustles beneath Hans’ palm as he pats the earth at his side. Henry squints up at the sun- midday, now, and they’re but halfway to Trosky. They ought to press on, he thinks, but then his stomach rumbles and he changes his mind. There is time for a short rest and for food.
Henry hauls himself to the ground and takes an apple from the sack. Juice runs sticky down his fingers as he bites into it, and as he chews he offers the next bite to Hans. He expects for him to take it in hand but instead he pushes himself to his elbows, mouth gaping like a fish so that Henry can hold the apple out for him to bite off.
“ ‘Slike feedin’ a horse,” Henry says around half-chewed apple.
Hans nickers, a perfect imitation of Aethon, and takes Henry by such surprise he chokes.
Times like these, Henry wonders what it would have been like had they been born the same, as two peasant boys in a small village. Whether Hans would always be soft around the edges as he is now, or if the arrogance that only a shy man can exude is innate. If he would feel for him as he does if he were different.
Perhaps nothing would really have changed, Henry thinks. They’d still have brawled in a tavern, wound up at odds until one saved the other and suddenly they were fast friends. Maybe in every lifetime the story of how they came to meet is unchanged.
Henry takes another bite. Holds out the apple for Hans, and his fingertips go aflame where Hans’ mouth brushes against them. The heat rushes from his hand all the way into his face, and Henry takes the excuse of tossing the apple core across the field to hide his blush.
“What d’you think Von Bergow will be like?” he asks to fill the silence between them, as though Hans could hear the beating of his heart.
Hans shrugs. He falls back into the grass, hands behind his head as a pillow. “A prick, probably. Most nobles are. Frankly I don’t care how he treats me or how he responds to the letter so long as he gives us a warm bath and a feather bed to sleep in.”
“Ahh, you don’t mean that. Thought you wanted to broker peace?”
“I do. I’ve just learnt that it’s best not to hope for things so as you can’t be disappointed when you don’t get them, is all. It’s as the old Roman philosopher said, ‘The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.’”
Hans stabs his finger in the air as he recites the quote. Henry falls back onto his elbows beside him, face tipped up toward the sun, and pictures him as a school boy. Little blonde haired Hans with a book in his lap, feet swinging, as an old, stern tutor points at him in just the same way.
“You sure that’s what that quote means?” Henry asks.
Hans cracks an eye open to glance at him. “You dare question your learned betters?”
“Just think maybe you’re interpreting it different, is all. I don’t think it means to never have hope. Sounds more like he’s saying you have to have hope, or else things will turn out bad because you’ve already decided they’re bad.”
Hans purses his lips as he turns Henry’s words over in his mind. His eyes narrow and then, when Henry thinks he’s about to argue, they crinkle at the corners.
The bark of his laugh sends birds rushing from the linden tree just a handful of paces away. On black wings they beat their way across the sky.
“My body guard, my squire, and now my philosopher. What else will you become for me, Henry?” Hans asks as he rubs at his face with the edge of his palm, and leaves a streak of dirt behind.
By God, they are a filthy pair. More like two street urchins than a lord and his human dog, and Henry wishes they could stay this way forever. No Rattay, no burning villages. No dead parents’ expectations to live beneath the weight of. Just the two of them and a field, and Hans’ laughter in the sun.
Henry shakes his head. “Suppose it’ll be your bath maid. C’mere, you can’t meet Lord Von Bergow with filth on your cheeks.”
“As if my clothes are fine enough that my face even matters at this point. But go on, if you insist.”
Hans tips his face up. He is loose limbed and in the giddy sort of mood that makes him easy for this sort of thing, liable to one up Henry in any jest. Henry licks his thumb like his ma used to do and leans over him.
The bridge of Hans’ nose is burnt, bringing his freckles into sharp relief. When the skin there peels and then darkens there will be even more splotches on his skin. Little remnants of their journey, left upon his face forever, and Henry only meant to rub off the filth.
But he cannot help but touch his thumb to the freckle that sits in the no man’s land between his cheek and his eye, the dark spot at the edge of his nose. Henry’s scrubbing slows to a gentle stroke and Hans’ eyes flutter closed, golden lashes fanned on his cheek.
They have done this before. Often when they’re drunk and can blame it upon the wine. Once in the woods on the hunt. The Greeks loved their friends as they loved their wives, Hans had reasoned, and so why should they not?
When their lips touch Henry does not think he is loving him as a friend. A friend would not lick the sticky taste of apple from Hans’ mouth, or bear the sour taste of a mouth in need of a linen cloth dipped in herbs and salt. A friend wouldn’t clutch at the back of Hans’ skull and suck at his lower lip until it is pink and flushed.
Hans gasps. Henry swallows the sound. He tries to etch into his mind the way Hans’ fingers cling to his ragged pourpoint, how he lifts himself from the grass to press up into the kiss, as though this will never happen again.
He must have good thoughts, full of hope. Good thoughts will beget a good ending. Hans’ wise men of old must be right, Henry reasons, or else they would not still be quoted.
The grass whispers in the wind. It’s only when Henry is breathless that he breaks off, but even that does not come easy: he has to touch his mouth to Hans’ once more, then a second time, until he reconciles himself with the fact that the moment is over.
“Am I suitable now?” Hans asks.
His voice is ragged. His tongue darts out to lick at swollen lips and Henry wants to say no. That he looks obscene, as if he is fresh from the bath house. That he wants to take him into the trees and truly ruffle him up. Stay there forever and forget this whole mad plot.
“If you look too flushed when we get there we’ll just blame it on the sun.” Henry drags himself to his feet, holds his hand out. Hans takes it and allows himself to be pulled up. “Tell me more about this wise man of yours- was he Greek, you said?”
“Roman!” Hans says as they set off down the road. “He was an emperor, in fact, I have a book of his at home in Rattay, you can use it to practice your piss poor Latin-“
“It’s not piss poor! I’m just- I'm new at it, is all!”
“Exactly, which makes it piss poor. Now, where was I-“
When it comes to Hans two things tend to be true, he’s found, even when those two things are opposites. He’s full of contradictions. Liable to drive Henry mad, if the killing doesn’t get to him first.
Odd that Hans can treat him the way he does. Henry’s got more blood on his hands than an executioner. His body should be defiled by the things he’s done and yet Hans wants and wants, licks over the scars that web his skin as though he can lick clean all the sins that Henry is stained with.
Hans tongue rubs hot on the bone of Henry’s ankle and Henry’s eyes roll back. His cock slides down to rub against the curve of his ass. It teases at his hole and Henry grinds his hips down, as though his will alone could bring Hans back inside him.
“You gonna fuck me or are you gonna sit there and lick my feet like Mutt?” Henry asks through gritted teeth.
Hans lets out a sound that’s half laugh, half ragged breath. “Well, now that you give me the idea…“
It was meant to be a joke. A cutting remark to get Hans back in him but Henry knows that look. He’s got that curl to his lips, blue eyes lit up like a boy on a dare and christ, Henry’s gone and put his foot in it now.
(branded henry, hans capon's armpits, post-maleshov)
Henry has missed Hans' mouth. Missed the gentle way Hans cradles his face in his palms, long, archer’s fingers skimming over the freshly scarred brand on his throat, curling around the backs of his ears as though he means to never let him break off, though Henry tries. He pauses between nipping at Hans’ lower lip and then dives in again, over and over, as if testing his ability to stop and failing every time. The only maneuver for escape is for his mouth to slide along the stubble on Hans’ jaw, a tactical retreat to the passageway of his throat. Henry wages war there with lips and teeth and tongue until Hans buries his nose in his hair to muffle the sound of his whine.
“Hal-“
Henry ignores his plea. He has killed for this moment, and he intends to take his time.
Seven lives lost at Maleshov, taken without a second thought. Henry’d slipped his dagger into the throat of seven men and stolen their futures from them, and that should worry him, how easily it’d been done. It ought to worry him that having a hot iron pressed to his throat had only caused him irritation, a strange twist of anxiety over what Hans might think of it.
It does, sometimes, in the middle of the night. But not for the right reasons, he supposes. Some nights he wakes sweating and panicked from dreams where he’d missed one guard, and turned to find Hans on his horse, shot through with an arrow. In others he’s not branded but hung, taken from this world to leave Hans without a blade at his side. He does worry endlessly, not about his own soul, but about what will happen the day he slips and all of his efforts at protecting Hans are for naught.
Chapter 2/7
post-Suchdol; explorations of PTSD, hurt/comfort, family cycles. ~50k, complete. Chapters to be posted weekly.
Sweat trickles between Hans’ shoulder blades, down the ravine of his spine where it pools at the small of his back. Even half unbuttoned he’s too warm in his cote, the breeze doing nothing to alleviate all the places his clothes stick to his skin, and so he slips his arms free of the sleeves and lets the upper half fall around his waist, held to his body by his belt. His hose he rolls down around his knees just before pulling off his shirt.
The linen is sopping, stained beneath the arms. Hans wipes his face on the only dry part he finds, a hint of fabric on the sleeves near the wrist, and then discards it on the grass. He stretches his arms out from his sides, skin warmed in the sun.
Henry whistles. He lies collapsed on the ground in the sparse shade offered by the shadow of the barn, hand held across his forehead to shade his eyes. He leers like a drunkard in a tavern.
Hans ought to be used to his staring by now. His face is pink as the scar that slashes across his stomach.
“You’re getting tanner than a farmhand,” Henry says. “Reckon if you practiced at the shooting range in Rattay undressed like this you’d win all the women over, and at least half the men.”
Hans glances at the wound, thick black scab surrounded by skin gone pink where it’s stretched tight, knitting itself shut. Ghastly thing that never stops its hurt, that’s reduced him to practicing with a child’s bow. He drapes the strap on his quiver over his good shoulder and nocks an arrow.
“They’d have me carted off for madness, more like,” Hans scoffs. “Lord Capon, gone off to war and come back addled in the head, running about half naked. Hanush would be overjoyed to have an excuse to lock me up once and for all.”
His arm trembles as he draws back the string. The draw weight on it is nothing and yet it feels as though he’s pulling back a crossbow with no gears to cock the weapon for him. Hans draws a breath, air burning his lungs. Pulls the string back towards his ear and lets the arrow fly.
Chapter 1/7
post-Suchdol; explorations of PTSD, hurt/comfort, family cycles.
~50k, complete. Chapters to be posted weekly.
It’s not been a long day at all and yet Hans is exhausted, and he doesn’t understand why it’s been that way every day since Suchdol. Once he’d been a man who could rise at dawn, hunt until dusk, and then still ride to the baths and drink well into the night.
Now he finds himself craving his bed by mid-day. Hans hasn’t napped so much since he’d been small enough to be tugging at his mother’s skirts. Hasn’t been so easy to lull off with a gentle touch since then either. Every stroke of Henry’s fingers along his hairline has him closer and closer to drifting off.
“Were you like this as a boy?” Henry asks.
“What d’you mean?” Hans asks, words slurred.
“Full of ‘what ifs’ and imaginary situations, talking about them as if they’re already real.”
Hans seeks out a bump on Henry’s chest. He picks at it absently to keep himself awake as he swims through his memories. Images come up smudged and he can’t seem to tell if that’s because of the painkiller, or because he simply doesn’t remember much of his youth at all. It’s as if there’s a wall in his mind, one that only comes down in dreams, or to let scattered memories surface when he least expects them.
His nail catches on Henry’s chest. Henry rests his palm atop his hand to settle his restless fingers, and so he wiggles his toes beneath the sheets instead. He’s never been able to settle for long.
“I don’t know. No one spent much time talking with me like this after my parents died- though in truth my father never really spoke with me like this. He was busy, you see. Lords don’t have much time for their children.” Hans blinks up at him in the dark. “Why?”
@bloodlessbhaalbabe put this demon of an image of henry shaving hans in my head so I had to exorcise it.
If you see any inaccuracies about medieval shaving in here no you didn't, enjoy the fantasy
“You’re gonna mangle yourself,” Henry says from behind his book. “Have you ever even shaved your own face before? Thought nobles didn’t lower themselves to tasks like that.”
Hans gives him a withering look. “Of course I have. What kind of a foolish question is that?”
He drops down onto the chair he’s dragged to the edge of their table in the Devil’s Den. It squeaks at the weight of him, as though if he wiggles the wrong way the legs might give out and send him crashing to the floor. Irritating, what a dump the place still is.
Not that Hans had expected the inn to be somehow transformed after Suchdol. Just that he could use some comforts, is all. Proper chairs, a wash basin. Something better to use as a mirror than the communion paten he’d nicked from the ruins of a crumbling church outside Trosky, but oh well. He’s survived in worse conditions.
Hans leans the silver plate up against their cracked pitcher, tilting it until his blurry reflection comes into view. He gets nothing but his chin first- the surface on the thing’s no bigger than his palm- then his forehead. Props it up a bit straighter and-
There. His own face staring back at him in hazy relief.
He’s not certain what he’d expected, really. Same scars on his cheeks from the pox he’d survived as a boy. Same off center nose, broken on a ride with Aethon at age twelve. If he has dark circles beneath his eyes, or looks a little more ragged than he’d looked when he set out on this whole journey, well. He blames the plate.
It’s not as smooth surfaced as the little mirror he has in Rattay, and he wishes desperately that he had that with him. Pretty little thing framed in gold, he’d bought it from some distant land called Venezia. He’d spent a real fortune on it too- Hanush had called him Narcissus gazing at his own reflection when he’d caught him using it and he’d laughed in shock that the man even knew who Narcissus was.
Hanush. If it weren’t for Hanush he wouldn’t be trapped in this rat hole at all.
Hans scratches at the dark blond hair growing thick along his jaw. He watches his wavy reflection wrinkle its nose. Even the last dregs of golden sunlight filtering in through the window do nothing to flatter hollows beneath his cheekbones. The healthy young man who’d set out from Rattay is gone.
Hell, his mirror probably is too. Hanush has likely sold it to pay off his gambling debts by now, he thinks. Just another thing he’d treasured lost.
The plate will have to do. Even if only because if he has this beard for even one more day he’s going to lose his fucking mind with the itching. He doesn’t know how Henry stands it.
[Read on AO3]
inspired by this amazing art by @hallowedhaunting + submitted for #vckinkfest: collared
“Hey-“
Daniel hurries to follow Armand, sweat dripping from the back of his neck and leaving his shirt damp between his shoulder blades. Turns a dark corner and finds himself near blinded on 42nd Street.
The deuce is a riot of neon lights, still packed even at three in the morning. The peep shows and porno theaters never rest. He’d taken advantage of those, once, when he was running from Armand. He’d fallen asleep in the middle of a scene of some guy beating off and woken up to a dead boy sitting beside him, staring at him so cold and unnervingly he’d shouted and scared the other guys in the theater, and gotten both of them kicked out.
Daniel loses track of Armand dipping in and out of the crowd, but only for a second. Just enough time to catch up with him at the corner and hook a finger in his belt loop to keep him from jaywalking and disappearing across the street.
“Jesus, slow down, would you? If I lose track of the house and you I’m gonna end up sleeping on the damn street,” Daniel says. He jerks at Armand’s belt loop, trying to get his attention. “Hey. Earth to Armand, hello?”
He’s got a flier in his hand, too busy staring at it to pay attention. Some place called the Vault. The ad says it’s relocated, and there’s probably an address on it but it’s covered by Armand’s thumb. In the neon light his bone white skin glows; first warm gold, and then, when the lights change, shocking red.
