Chapter 2: Thorfinn has 99 problems (and They’re all Askeladd’s Fault)
Like all problems in Thorfinn’s life, The Canute Problem led back to Askeladd.
Canute had not always been a problem for Thorfinn. When the silent blond had popped into existence beside him after the teacher ordered them all to pair up for a project, Thorfinn had been relieved. The project was graded as much on students ability to work together as it was the project itself, and Thorfinn wasn’t about to let his grades fall. He had a duel to win, and for that chance he’s put up with anyone, even those mindless Askeladd fan boys who wouldn’t leave him alone.
But Canute wasn’t like them. He didn’t seem to have any interest in Askeladd or Thorfinn’s life on his ship. If anything he seemed nervous about anything concerning Space wolves. He just wanted to get the project done. A model project partner.
To be honest, Thorfinn was always a bit puzzled as to why Canute kept coming back to him, silently volunteering to be his partner again and again. With his stunning blond hair and icy blue eyes, he looked the type who would have all sorts of kids lining up to be his friend. Even Thorfinn had heard the whispers about him, wondering if the boy were a princess or Freya reborn.
Then again, such hangers on would want Canute to speak, if only so they could fawn over the sound of his voice, and that was the one thing Canute would never do. In all the years Thorfinn had worked with Canute, he had never heard a sound come out of his lips. All speaking parts of their presentations were handled by Thorfinn, and when one asshole teacher insisted they break the mold and let Canute speak, the boy had frozen up so badly Thorfinn had needed to physically haul him to the nurse’s office. In fact if Thorfinn had not seen Canute pull his dad down to whisper in his ear with his own eyes, he’d think Canute mute.
Not that Canute’s silence had ever been a problem for their projects. He would simply complete his share of the work and imput it next to Thorfinn’s. On the rare times he needed to communicate with Thorfinn directly, he’d just write it down on a piece of paper and slip it to him. Thorfinn didn’t mind. It was a little weird sure, but Thorfinn had been dealing with far worse than weird all his life. One shy classmate would not a hinder to him in his goal to earn his duel, so he would let sleeping dogs lie.
No, the problem with Canute did not start until he returned from raiding season to face his senior year, when Askeladd decided Thorfinn’s old rags were past repair and dragged him to get new ones.
Thorfinn did not need or want Askeladd’s help buying clothes. He knew his wardrobe needed replacing (it seemed as if every enemy had some kind of personal mission to wreck his clothing this raiding season) and he was more than capable of doing it himself. Space furs were important for any space farer, as their protection voided the need for more advanced space suits. The creatures of the untamed cosmos needed no protection from space’s pressure or cold, and provided you had an eye for quality, you could borrow their abilties by means of borrowing their pelts. Thorfinn had bought them before, and with the skill born of necessity, managed to gain quite the repuation for bargaining if he did say so himself.
No, there was no need for Askeladd to come at all, but for his long standing rivalry with the PTA moms for best kid. Apparently Thorfinn’s sense of style (anything that functioned) was embarrassing him.
Then Bjorn had over heard and decided to invite himself along, with Torgin and Atil to boot. A full on “fun family trip” without the fun, or the family, or the trip.
Thorfinn hated it here.
The shop itself was a mesh of bright lights, bright colors, and far to many people strutting around with too bright smiles. Barely 15 minutes in and all Thorfinn wanted to do was hide in a corner. But Askeladd was on a mission, and the others weren’t going to let Thorfinn go until he was done. They’d never been the types to pass up free entertainment.
It was here, while sulking behind some ridiculously bright patterned shirts to avoid Askeladd, that he spotted Canute.
He didn’t see Thorfinn, small as he was behind the rack. Instead he was engrossed in conversation with his dad - a man with a balding cone shaped head that Canute was lucky he hadn’t inherited - about clothes. As Thorfinn watched, Canute lifted one of the awful patterned shirts out of the line up and held it to his chest. His Dad panicked, shaking his hands wildly to diswade Canute, while the boy in question let out a tingling laugh.
A rush of jealousy filled Thorfinn as he looked on that hideous shirt. If his father were still alive, would he take him clothing shopping like Canute’s dad did? Would they share a laugh over its ridiculous pattern before discarding it to the side, completely unaware of what a precious moment it really was?
“Hey Thorfinn what are you doing…Oh gods!” A brash voice broke through his thoughts, catching Thorfinn in a rare moment off guard. “Guys guys come quick!” An arm grabbed Thorfinn and pulled him into a headlock. “Thorfinn’s staring at a girl!!!”
Thorfinn fought the headlock, twisting his body to get a glimpse up of Atil, Bjorn, and Askeladd running towards him. Atil had a camera in his hand and Thorfinn’s heart sank. He knew what this was about.
Atil and Torgrim had recently started a vlog about “Space Wolves and Brotherhood!” And ever since they had been pestering Thorfinn nonstop to be in their videos. Apparently he’d been in one accidentlly (stormed in through the room they’d been filming in after an argument with Askeladd and snapping when one of the brother’s made some joke about him yowling like a ship’s cat) and it had been the one with the most views. According to Atil he was “moe” and “marketable.”
Naturally he’d made his opinion on the topic very clear, and they both sported the bruises to prove it. But they seemed to have learned was to be sneakier about it.
“Look out viewers!” Atil’s voice grated over Thorfinn’s ears as he addressed the camera. “It appears our ships cat is going into heat! Lets see who the lovely lady who’s caught his eye is!” He began to pan the camera towards Canute and his dad, both of whom had stopped at the shouting and were now looking at them all.
Several things happened at once. Canute’s dad immediately jumped in front of Canute, while the later tried to dodge behind him, disappearing behind his bulk. Thorfinn stomped on Torgrim’s toes as hard as he could while also biting him in the arm, causing him to howl and release him. Thorfinn took the opportunity to jump at Atil, trying to knock the camera out of his hands. Atil gave a screach and turned to run, but before Thorfinn could get him Bjorn’s thick arms wrapped around him and pinned Thorfinn to his chest.
“Stop horsing around,” Bjorn’s deep voice rumbled over Thorfinn’s head. “We are in a store.”
“He started it!” Torgrim rubbed his arm where Thorfinn had bit him. “We were just trying to document his first love.”
“Yeah!” Atil agreed. “No one would believe us if we didn’t!”
“I wasn’t looking at shit!” Thorfinn howled. Struggling in Bjorn’s arms.
“Of course not!” Askeladd smirked. “You were making big old eyes at the shirt he was holding. Definitely not at the pretty face.”
“Maybe i like the pattern!”Thorfinn retorted, unwilling to give Askeladd an inch of ground. An admiring an ugly shirt was way better than admiring his lab partner, or worse, what Thorfinn had really been thinking about. Admitting a weakness like missing his father would only get him mocked harder. Real men avenged their fathers, they didn’t miss them. Or so the other Sea wolves had made clear the first few years of his life in space.
Askeladd smiled a smile that told Thorfinn he was seen right through. The baldy opened his mouth no doubt to say something truely horrible, but before he could speak he was interupted.
“Delete that footage.” A no-nonsense voice came from behind them all. As one, the Sea wolves turned - with Thorfinn still dangling from Bjorn’s arms - to look at Canute’s father, hands on his hips.
“Excuse me?” Atil blinked.
“Delete that footage.” Canute’s father said again. “My son has a no photo agreement with the government of this planet, and if you post anything with his face we will get you all arrested. Am I clear?”
“Oh we’ll be clear alright,” Torgrim took a threatening step forward, “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”
This was bad. The last thing Thorfinn needed was his lab partner not talking into to him because Stupid Torgrim had off and killed his father. He wiggled harder in Bjorn’s arms, but unlike Torgrim, Bjorn was not nearly so easy to escape.
Desperate for back up, Thorfinn scanned the shopping mall, trying to find Canute. He spotted him crouching behind a stand of coats, clearly trying to pretend like he was uneffected, but from the hunch of his shoulders and rhe duck of his head, he was terrified. He would be no help in stopping this.
Then Askeladd stepped forward, smoothly cutting between Torgrim and Canute’s dad’s line of sight. “It seems there’s been a misunderstanding here,” he said, all smiles. “We will of course delete the footage. The boys just got a little carried away, that’s all.”
He gave Torgrim a hard look that had the man shrinking back, rubbing the back of his neck and trying to look as if it was his choice.
“Well get on with it.” Canute’s dad huffed, not at all taken in by Askeladd’s slippery charm. Under his sharp gaze, Askeladd took the camera from Atil’s hands, and hit the delete button.
“There, all gone.” He smiled up at Canute and his dad. The dad huffed again, before grabbing Canute and shuffling him out as fast as he could. Neither spared the Space Wolves so much as a backwards glance. Soon, the only sign their presence was once in thr store was the ugly shirt, now dropped unceremoniously on the ground.
“Well Thorfinn, I don’t envy your chances,” Askeladd said, conversationally. “With a father like that you’d have an easier time asking the king to marry his daughter.”
“I wasn’t - “
“A real beauty though,” Bjorn sighed as if Thirfinn hadn’t spoken. “Could have passed for a princess himself.”
“Didn’t realize our kitty cat was into boys,” Atil mused. “You’d think it would have come up before, what with our crew being all men.”
“I’M NOT-“
“Maybe so, but who wouldn’t make an exception for a face like that?” Torgrim replied.
“I’M GONNA KILL ALL OF YOU!” Thorfinn screamed at the top of his lungs. Everyone winced.
Bjorn tried to put his hand over Thorfinn’s mouth, but it was too late. A very cross looking shop employee showed up and quickly booted the lot of them from the shop, banning them from returning for “excessive noise complaints.”
Askeladd had the nerve to blame Thorfinn for it too, as if it wasn’t his and his men’s fault for getting on Thorfinn’s case. He’d promptly told the baldy where to shove it and went to his room, slamming the door as he did so. It felt good.
But Askeladd always had the last laugh, as Thorfinn discovered when he woke up to find all his shirts missing except for an ugly one he’d sworn was the same one Canute and his dad had been laughing about before it all went to hel.
He’d tried to wear his old space furs instead, holes be damned, but they were missing too, along with every single coat or jacket Thorfinn owned. Thorfinn considered going without one, but the weather had already started to dip below freezing even this early in the year, and he wouldn’t be let into school besides.
He could skip, but that would ruin his perfect attendance record and jeopardize his chances for a duel….
Thorfinn wore the shirt. It was truely ugly. The pale pink base interupted by the loudest, ugliest prints known to Dane in a bright, continuous pattern. Askeladd said the style was “Hawaiian” based off an island on long forgotten earth, that had been recently rediscovered by a leading historian.
Thorfinn called it an afront to nature, and living proof why Earth went extinct. Anyone who came up with such a pattern deserved it.
What followed was the single most humiliating day of Thorfinn’s life. Everyone was staring at him. Every room he walked in turned silent as thr eyes followed his moving body and he just knew that as soon as he left the air would be abuzz with jokes about his new outfit.
Whatever, he gripped the strap of his backpack so hard his knuckles turned white. He didn’t need their approval. He just had to avoid Canute until he had forgotten about their unfortunate meeting in the store. Or at least until Thorfinn was no longer wearing living proof that it happened. (And claimed he was making goo-goo eyes at the shirt, Gods what was he thinking, this was all Askeladd’s fault!) How hard could it be?
Very hard it turned out. Since they were both honors students, Canute was in all his classes. Even when Thorfinn decided to forgo his usual seat in the front row for one in the very back, Canute had noticed and deliberately taken the desk one seat away from Thorfinn. Thorfinn froze, barely daring to move a muscle. Slowly, he pulled his limbs closer and tried to make himself smaller, hiding behind an open textbook.
He snuck a peak at Canute, but Canute wasn’t looking at him. Had he even realized it was Thorfinn he was sitting next to? Of course he had to, he’d picked a different seat than normal! Unless he was also trying to hide from Thorfinn in the back and just didn’t notice him. But surely he would have seen Thorfinn when he came in?
No. He knew. He had to be messing with Thorfinn, enjoying getting the Space Wolf to squirm. Well they’d see about that. Thorfinn straightened his posture to the languid posing of Askeladd, trying to convey confidence and control. He glared over at Canute, then deliberately looked away like he had better things to do (the effect was somewhat ruined by Thorfinn immediately glancing back at Canute to see if he’d noticed). Canute did not respond. In fact he didn’t look at Thorfinn once the whole class, instead keeping his head down as he worked on his expensive tablet.
But once Thorfinn rose to leave the class, Canute followed.
It was becoming a pattern. When Thorfinn walked in the halls, Canute was two paces behind him. When it was lunch break, Canute took out his lunch and ate beneath the very tree Thorfinn himself was hiding in, forcing him to be unable to leave for the whole period.
This couldn’t be normal. Surely Canute didn’t spend this much time following Thorfinn? (He did, Canute had always been on the periphery of Thorfinn’s gaze, but he hadn’t minded it before. Until now the pretty boy had never been a threat.) Clearly Canute was up to something, perhaps trying to intimidate Thorfinn, or worse, talk about what happened.
But Thorfinn wouldn’t let him. He just had one more period to go, and then he’d be free. Free to run to the nearest store and buy sensible furs and hide them where not even Askeladd could find them. Free to burn this awful shirt and put this whole thing behind him.
One more period.
And then Thorkell came.
—————
Thorfinn sat in the principal’s office, his head reeling. The principal, Askeladd, and Canute’s dad-who-was-not-his-dad were all talking, but Thorfinn couldn’t hear them. All he could do was sit and stare at Canute, his thoughts racing a hundred miles a minute.
Canute was a prince. Canute! His ever quiet shadow, his lab partner, prince of the Danes! Canute, who had seen him in his ugly shirt, who had spoken, who had spoken his name, “Thorfinn” like it was the sound of the bell, beautiful and worth saying and not at all the agressive, ugly shirt wearing weirdo the rest of the school shunned. Did Canute’s voice always sound like that when he spoke? Is that why he kept silent? Rightly afraid of the power such a voice held?
Perhaps it was a part of being royalty. Like how Danes were designed stronger and the terraformers of the Anglo and Saxon systems were designed to be better with plants, royals were designed with voices that could hypnotize the masses. It would certainly explain how the king kept such a firm hand on warriors and Space Wolves alike.
But if that were the case, surely Canute would be able to use it against Thorkell? Surely such a call would be better suited to taming a giant than acknowledging Thorfinn.
How had Thorkell gotten here anyways? Last Thorfinn had seen him he’d been guarding the London asteroid belt, and the very holes in Thorfinn’s furs that had started this whole mess. It had taken Thorfinn and Askeladd’s crew a week to get back to Gorm’s planet, and Thorfinn knew for a fact they hadn’t been followed through the hyperspace. Even if Thorkell had hopped in a ship immediately after they’d left, he still would have been three or four days behind. Not a measly two.
It all pointed to some new technology, some short cut, that gave Thorkell the edge. Something that did not bode well for the galaxy as a whole if true.
And speaking of Thorkell, how had he known his mother’s name? Was he truly his great uncle? Why tell him this now when they were opposed? He couldn’t have expected Thorfinn to suddenly side with him. He’d thought Canute and Thorfinn were dating! No man worth his salt was going to dump a prince to join a great-uncle he’d never met. Not that he was dating Canute. But still, it was the principle of the matter.
"You are all missing the obvious solution." Askeladd's voice interupted Thorfinn’s mental spiral. He shot Thorfinn a grin that clearly said he wasn’t done with messing with him. “Thorfinn is one of my best men. If he becomes the prince's bodyguard, he'll both provide protection and minimize the disruption to the prince's classes."
Thorfinn scowled as the principal and Canute’s Not-Dad began to agree. It seemed Hawaiian shirts weren’t enough, Askeladd had found a weakness in Thorfinn and like always, was gonna push until Thorfinn snapped. Only the promise of a duel whispered in his ear, was enough to stay Thorfinn’s dagger from ending up in Askeladd’s side, honor be damned.
At least he wasn’t alone in his misery, Canute was also here in this mockery of a performance put together by manipulative adults. Piercing blue eyes looked back at Thorfinn with a kind of bashful embarrassment that begged Thorfinn to overlook the pushy adults all around them.
It struck Thorfinn then, that this was probably the longest he and Canute had ever spent face to face, not with heads down over shared work, or two paces behind in the halls. Really, truly face to face, as if there was any way Thorfinn could stand before a prince as equals.
Then Canute smiled, soft thing, but somehow more blinding than the sun. Thorfinn felt his own face heat at the sheer warmth emitting from it. Was this another power ingrained into royalty? How was he supposed to protect anyone with such a blinding sight in his eyes?
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Askeladd laughing at him. Damn him. This really was all his fault.
#project hail mary
#cats of tumblr
#lana del rey
#heated rivalry
#photography
