Something More Than Honor, Chapter Twenty
Previous ~ Masterlist ~ Next Read from the start
Also on AO3
Content for this chapter: Noncon, dubcon (what 'consent' is given is uninformed, emotionally manipulated, and part of a power imbalance), abuse of power, multiple whumpers, a captivity situation that verges on domestic whump, religious homophobia, chains, imprisonment, failed escape attempt, nightmares/flashbacks, self caretaking
In Konstantin's nightmares, he remembers paying Victor and Lilli's forfeits while a 'guest' held for ransom at Castle Ausric.
"You do want this," Victor remarked.
Chapter wordcount: 3,300
“I’m afraid that’s the end of your fortification.” Victor extended his hand, and as Konstantin dropped the captured piece into it, added, “You’ve seemed distracted the past hour.”
He closed his hand on the fortress fast enough to catch Konstantin’s fingertips. Konstantin smiled and pulled them free, slowly. In the process, his arm nudged several of the pieces he’d taken from Ausric off the table.
“Maybe I am,” he admitted, ducking to grab them. “If just this past hour.” The timemark-etched candle burning on the mantle said this was their second hour playing. “What about you, though? Usually I don’t hold so many pieces of yours at once that I run out of room for them.”
It earned a chuckle, as he’d hoped. Both because Victor’s laughter was pleasant and because Konstantin would rather not be pressed on his distraction. He didn’t know how to explain it. He hadn’t felt distracted, but if anything all too aware. On guard. Or as if he should be on guard. Or the very opposite of that, because someone dizzy with thirst who has crawled to a well is all too aware of the bucket, the rope, the water below, the squeaking pulley that doesn’t wind fast enough, but doesn’t need to guard against a drop.
He tried to drink in Victor’s laughter, and maybe it was just that the days passed slowly here, and quietly, with little to do and few people to speak to. He was less often with Victor lately, now that Lilli attracted her share of her husband’s attention.
Coming back to himself, he set the pieces down in less precarious positions.
“I have been distracted,” Victor said. The flames on the candles and flickering low in the hearth made his eyes gleam, their color indiscernible. “I’ve been considering something.”
It seemed he might say what without being prompted, so Konstantin made himself wait that moment, lowering his gaze to the board, trying to determine another move. The fireplace added an unnecessary heat to the summer evening. Warmth stretched taut across his face, itched in his palms, sank in his thighs.
Victor stood. “I’ve noticed—” he began, coming around the table.
And never finished. His hand closed at the nape of Konstantin’s neck and drew him to his feet.
They were nearly of a height, Victor the slightest amount shorter and broader. Stronger, maybe. He had the advantage of surprise. And Konstantin allowed himself to be pulled about by him, not thinking to fight. The question flashed through his mind as Victor’s hold remained on his neck, as their eyes met and he saw how dark Victor’s had grown—if this did become a fight, could Konstantin win it? Perhaps, but what then? Overpowering your host in his own keep was not only bad manners but bad tactics.
And it wasn’t a fight, because Victor only brought him down the brief distance until their mouths met. The kiss might be as fierce as an attack, but Konstantin grasped a handful of his doublet and met it as hungrily. Without much experience at this, he let Victor take the lead, parting Konstantin’s lips with a sweep of his tongue, tasting him. So this is how… The thought wouldn’t continue. As Victor pulled back, his teeth scraped with a sweet sharpness that made Konstantin gasp.
“You do want this,” Victor remarked. They remained so close that his words fell warm across Konstantin’s still-open mouth.
He nodded. Which brought another kiss, slower, while the hand on his neck moved into his hair, tightening its grip, and the other landed at his waist, pressing him to move. It carried them to the bed. Victor came down on top of him, his knee between Konstantin’s thighs, pressing them wider, the position intimate, vulnerable, and exciting for that vulnerability. He was hard, and so was Konstantin—the blaze as they rubbed together drew another sound from him, absurdly soft and harsh at once.
Victor chuckled, grinding down with his hips. The force of it almost extinguished the fire, became painful instead of sweet, but it didn’t quite reach that point. When he stopped, Konstantin was more disappointed than relieved.
Rising on one elbow, Victor made a rough, considering sound. “It’s a thought for forfeits,” he said with one last touch, playing with the laces over Konstantin’s groin. “Next time I win…or you do.”
A game of Capture ended when a player’s king piece was vanquished—whether he should be considered captured or slaughtered on the battlefield remained a matter of personal taste. But it was the one piece that couldn’t be ransomed back.
Victor monitored Konstantin’s knight as it approached the edge of the board. He’d let him make it. No doubt he already planned the forfeit. But that distracted Victor from the pikemen circling his king.
Konstantin had improved at executing two tactics at once. He’d heard Hartlorn’s version of Capture had dual pieces called Sovereigns, reflecting the man and wife who ruled the eastern kingdom. Or lady and husband, might equally be the way to view it with their customs. To win, you had to vanquish both. So long as either remained alive, it might save the other. He’d like to try that variation, crowning a shield-bearer with wax to mark the second Sovereign, but Victor would never play it—“Will you send a woman against me?” he asked, brow furrowed above a scornful grin. “And anyway, I don’t want to play a game that lasts into tomorrow morning.”
A game with one king, unaided by any equal and outnumbered by two dozen enemy pieces, did go faster.
Konstantin moved a pikeman one square to the left. Victor turned an archer toward his knight, but didn’t attack. With the next move Konstantin advanced the knight to the edge.
“I’ll take my shield-bearer back.” He didn’t need that piece for his strategy, but keeping his strategy obscured from Victor was also part of his plan. And the entire game, for all he still tried to win it, was by this point a thin excuse. “For what?”
Victor’s thumb ran over the ivory figure’s shield. As if he had to consider it, he drawled, “Let’s have my favorite.”
Sometimes they waited until the game’s end to play their forfeits. Not tonight. Smiling, he rose and came around the table. Smiling, Konstantin dropped from the chair to his knees.
It was far more interesting, and less humiliating—or humiliating to more purpose—than many of Victor’s earlier forfeits. As Konstantin unlaced him and licked a stripe along his cock, he felt the shudder run down Victor’s body. He took the head in his mouth, tongue tracing the underside, and Victor’s hand pulled at his hair.
“You’re a quick learner,” he said. “But slow.”
So Konstantin stopped playing. He made his jaw relax and then the back of his mouth, his throat. Felt Victor occupy each in turn.
“There.” His voice grew heavy with satisfaction.
It never took him long to come like this. But it was hard to keep track of time with Victor so deep inside, and moving, not unpleasant, just overwhelming. Konstantin was going to forget every detail of his Capture strategy, and that was all right.
“Victor?” Lilli asked.
His mouth and throat were empty so suddenly he choked on it.
She stood at the inner door, the one Konstantin had never entered through. There must be a staircase up from the lady’s chambers. She wasn’t in shocked stillness, because she began to cross the room. He saw her skirt, quilted in petals or scales of blue and green; he couldn’t look at her face.
Victor pulled his fingers from his hair. Rarely speechless, he was silent now. Konstantin leaned his head against Victor’s thigh, not able to stay upright—if this counted, on his knees—without something to brace him. Or wanting the reassurance of contact.
He heard the soft, wet sound of a kiss.
Victor bent to his wife’s mouth, their lips meeting sweetly, then eagerly. Her eyelashes fluttered. The jewels of her gaze gleamed through them, met Konstantin’s stare as the kiss eased.
Lilli’s hand at the back of his head pushed him toward her husband’s cock.
If it startled Victor, it didn’t make him hesitate.
“He’s good?” she asked moments or hours later.
“Very,” Victor murmured. “A talent as well as a liking for it.”
“Are you going to keep that pretty mouth to yourself, Victor?”
He didn’t. A sharp laugh, a sharper tug that took Konstantin from where he was still erect, and Victor nudged him toward the other side of the bed, where Lilli reclined.
She had been watching. Now she opened her legs, and Konstantin lowered himself between them.
Unlike Victor, she wanted work from his tongue—so he discovered, and so she might be discovering, too. Her sounds turned from questioning, almost puzzled, to pleased as he sought out where to go. At Calister, they’d told each other about the clitoris in whispers and jokes; it wasn’t as difficult to find as he might have assumed. Figuring out how she wanted it touched involved more effort, guided by uncertain sounds, trying to be a fast enough learner. Once he understood, he kept up with the circling and sweeping strokes until every muscle in his mouth grew sore. Her grasp on his hair wasn’t as sharp as Victor’s, but equally urgent. He knew he couldn’t slow or cease.
He didn’t want to. Her quiet sighs were as beautiful as the rest of her. He couldn’t help being pleased at his skill, or enjoying how her creamy thighs surrounded him. He thought once, briefly, of Catilyn, and how she might receive something like this. He stopped before the thought became longing or anything else. There was nothing to long for, he had so much here.
After Lilli came, a ripple of tension passing through her, a final puzzled gasp, Konstantin slumped back against the bedpost. He smiled with a wet and aching mouth. She smiled back at him, the close-lipped expression nearly sleepy with afterglow, and Victor, chuckling, rolled toward her. His hands lifted her slender hips and he sheathed himself.
Lilli ran limp fingers up his back as Victor pounded into her. He pressed his face to her neck. Seen by Konstantin, whom they both might have forgotten, her smile faded. It was replaced—not quite by pain, only some discomfort, and a minor resignation to boredom. Something similar to what he’d felt at moments, pleasing them, though Konstantin hoped he hadn’t shown it.
A still night in the furnace of late summer. The taste of semen mixed with wine on his tongue. Lilli’s voice murmured sweetly beside him.
“Yes, it’s a sin, but you’ll do it for me, won’t you? I want you to give him what he wants.”
The sound of their mouths meeting. A low rumble in his voice, half-laughter, as he told her, “You can bestow another chapel for me, Lillibet. As an apology, or thanksgiving.” The rasp of skin on the sheets. “On his behalf, too—you’re generous enough.”
Konstantin hadn’t asked for anything, but it seemed like they could read everything in him. He’d gone so long unknown. For that to change—
Victor leaned over him, almost brushing his cheek as he asked, “Well? Do you?”
“Yes.” Lilli was right. Konstantin wanted him. Wanted to please him. Wanted to learn what it was like, what he was like, all of what Victor had to teach.
Another night, or the same one, the air still full of motionless heat. Victor’s length spit-slickened from Konstantin’s mouth. As he sent it into him, Konstantin clutched Lilli’s hand. She’d offered it but complained afterward of how tight he gripped.
It didn’t only hurt, though. Sparks of sweetness came when Victor moved at a certain angle. A suggestion that might become more. And the way Victor enjoyed it, enjoyed him…for him, Konstantin would endure much more than this, the weight pressing his back into the down mattress, the awkward indignity of his spread legs, the pain and the confusing pleasure.
Victor’s lips brushed his neck and the underside of his jaw. The memory of them, of his exploring tongue and the scrape of his teeth, made Konstantin want to be kissed there. But Victor didn’t have the attention to spare for kissing, only offered the wet warmth of his breath. His chest surged with each deep inhalation and exhalation, slower than his strokes.
“I fought myself,” he whispered, too quiet for Lilli to hear, almost too quiet for Konstantin to be certain he made out the words. Each landed like a fingertip on his throat. “I fought for months, ever since our first night in that tent, not to bend you over the nearest table. I shouldn’t have put up so much resistance. You’re magnificent.” His thrusts were stretches of pulsing heat, building in a necessary rhythm beyond any sense of wrongness. “Though I wouldn’t want to squander your first time. This is your first time, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Konstantin whispered back.
He felt Victor’s smile against his skin. “You’re made for it.”
The door to his tower room didn’t lock, from the inside or the outside, but the sound of it opening in the night was so strange that Konstantin wondered if he’d misheard until a body slid beside his.
“Lilli isn’t feeling well,” Victor said. “I’m lonely.”
Konstantin turned toward him. “I’m lonely, too.”
Victor returned his kiss perfunctorily, but threw an arm over Konstantin that kept him close. He’d been out of the keep all day—in the courtyard and gatehouse, attending to matters his guest was not supposed to know about. Loneliness aside, whatever it was clearly left him tired, because soon he snored, a not too loud and husky sound that soothed Konstantin to sleep too, still tucked in an embrace.
He woke on his stomach, with Victor moving inside him.
“Lilli prefers it this way, sometimes,” he murmured in Konstantin’s ear. “Waking once the difficult part is over.”
He felt grateful. The tension that had grown as he returned to awareness—not much, probably less than what gathered at times he felt Victor enter, whether as a forfeit for game pieces or other reasons—eased as a hand traced along his ribs, pushing his nightshirt farther up.
That was a difficult memory to awaken from, confusing, Victor’s absence above him almost sinister because of how it defied expectations. Konstantin turned to lie on his side. Rain fell and wind knocked its fists against the stone walls. These summer storms lessened heat, but never made it truly cool. Even in clothing that stuck to his skin from water and sweat, he was shaking, not shivering.
They’d dragged him back to Castle Ausric with his hands behind him; in the dungeon, they took the manacles off to clean and bandage his shoulder, then put them back on with his arms in front. Despite the iron weight, despite the scant few feet of chain connecting his wrists to a ring in the wall, at least the new position put less strain on the wound. Favoring it, Konstantin lay on his left side. The search for a bearable posture had put his back to the door. So he didn’t see who entered. Didn’t have the strength or courage to look. He heard the commander’s “My lord,” just before the door shut again and everything inside him went empty and cold with dread.
“You stupid son of a bitch,” Victor told him.
He crossed the cell in a few strides, in an instant. His hand seized Konstantin’s hair, tugged him up and around to face him. Even if he had dared to meet Victor’s eyes, they were too close—nose brushing nose, forehead almost to forehead. It could appear to be the beginning of a kiss, but he couldn’t remember when Victor last kissed him.
He held him there long enough to take a deep breath, as if in relief. Konstantin might not have breathed at all.
“Do you mean to make us both look like fools?” Unanswered, Victor shook him, jarring pain from his scalp to his shoulder blade and down to his legs on the flagstones. “Do you?”
He tried to breathe, tried to swallow, managed to whisper, “No.”
Victor sighed. His smooth cheek rubbed against the stubble on Konstantin’s. “I’ll remind you of your place here,” he said, almost tender, “whenever I have to.”
He pushed him down, keeping a handful of his hair. His other hand pinned the chain between the manacles to the floor, Konstantin’s wrists above his head. It wrenched at his shoulder. Victor might not know about that injury yet, if he hadn’t had the patience to hear the commander’s report. Or he might not care. He forced himself between Konstantin’s legs and rolled his hips.
A familiar rhythm, more punishment than desire, but at least their clothes remained on. Konstantin closed his eyes and turned his face as far as he could from the heat of Victor’s breath. One wouldn’t have thought, after a night spent in the forest and the time in this cell, that heat could ever be unwelcome. The pull on his hair brought tears prickling. He tried not to make a sound, to keep his tongue still and his lips together. Even when the wound in his back sent out an agonized spasm as it was pressed against the cell’s thin pallet. Even through Victor’s jabbing and panting, bad enough in themselves, and bad for the memories they brought, if Konstantin let himself remember, if he let himself think.
He didn’t think. Memories came anyway, in feeling, in movement. He succeeded in remaining silent, even as Victor’s hand released his head and reached between them, opening his trousers. He remained silent when Victor grunted above him, his release splattering on his shirt, and then came the sting of knowing it was too late for that to matter much. If it had ever mattered, whether he kept quiet or pleaded.
His body surged away as soon as Victor got off of him, and the blow he struck Konstantin was unexpected, somehow, still, but he stayed silent for that too. Victor spat a word or two he couldn’t make out through his ringing ears, and his upper lip grew warm with the seep of blood from one nostril. And the door shut, and he was alone.
Waking—which must mean he slept—Konstantin tumbled out of the bed, the motion graceless and desperate as an escape. The storm had passed. Stars shone at the windows, which he’d failed to shutter. The sills were clammy where rain had blown in.
He’d spent half a year without seeing stars, and he felt nothing at the sight of them now.
But the texture of damp stone under his hand, the breath of air from the night, these brought him back into this room. For the moment.
He went to the chest on the far side of his bed, heaved the lid up, felt through the clothing folded inside. A terrible few moments when he thought it might be in a different chest, another he’d have to find and search through, but—there. Thick fur backed by wool. The bronze clasps, one pointed with a hart’s antlers, one toothed with the crenellations of a tower.
Back on the bed, he wrapped Adam Tynae’s cloak around him. It was too warm, of course. But dry. Konstantin stroked his fingers through the fur lining.
Adam had slung it over his shoulders in the courtyard of Castle Ausric, just before he unlocked the chains. When it was all over.
You’re out of there, Kon, he told himself. You’re safe. No one will ever touch you again.
Next chapter
Taglist (send an Ask or DM if you'd like to be added or removed!): @starlit-hopes-and-dreams, @whump-tr0pes, @tiffany96, @stripedroseandsketchpads,
