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.”

tagged by @ptacku!!

scene from my current long wip in which hans has a dream:

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?”

“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.

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.

“What is an S&M club?” Armand asks.