Mer rolled "1534: Die Axt im Haus erspart den Zimmerman. [The axe in house saves the carpenter]." on the Prompt List of Doom for johnwantits's [tumblr] newest challenge, and somehow I ended up writing it instead. But as I was chain-watching 'Vikings' for the first time, it only made sense. Not sure if this actually qualifies for the challenge since I didn't combine it with a prompt from the Bottom!John Prompts List so I'll probably do another thing for the challenge that actually combines a prompt from both lists.

This was a strange town indeed. Quiet, no people present. No warriors present to defend the simple houses. Jon cocked an eyebrow at Greg and gestured at the others to spread out. Just because there was no one seen did not mean that no one was present. His head snapped up at the sound of quiet rustling and murmuring from a building to his left and he grinned. There were always hiders.

The wood splintered under his boot when he kicked the door in, his brothers following behind and sweeping into the room filled with men in strange, brown robes. For a moment, he only watched as axes and swords pierced flesh and cries of pain and death split the air. The strange men provided no challenge for his brothers and after making sure of that, he turned and left, wanting to further explore the village for inhabitants and plunder to take home. Greg and and several others stayed close behind him as he walked the small streets between buildings, little bit at a time losing men to their curiosity as they pulled away to examine the small houses. Before long, he was alone, axe in one hand and the other resting on the hilt of his dagger, wary of defenders.

The building at the end of the dusty lane was noticeably different than the rest, made of stone rather than wood, and the shutters that were present had those strange 't' shapes carved into each plank of wood, as did the door. There was no sound inside but something about it prickled at instincts which had always served him well in the past and so he approached silently, pulling his dagger from its sheath as he pushed the door opened. Beyond was a room filled with shining candlestick holders and 't's, the latter also encrusted with precious gems, several bound books meticulously lined on the tables lining the side walls. And a man.

The man was wrapped in the same robes as the others they had found, but it struck the Viking that the bald patch that had been present on the others was missing on this one. It also struck him that the man was crouched low, rifling inside of a waist-high cabinet and taking no care to look at him, though his entrance could not have been missed with the way the door creaked and squealed. Was the rifling an act to hide the presence of a weapon?

"Do not just stand there. Help me look," a deep voice echoed from inside the cabinet and Jon jumped.

"You speak our language?" he asked in surprise. "The others did not seem to."

"They are idiots. They only care for their God and his word," the other man replied, still not looking at him. How fascinating. In all his years as a raider and a warrior and a villageman, Jon had seen all sorts of reactions to his presence: fear, anger, relief, annoyance. But never indifference. A strange reaction from a strange man.

"Is he not your god as well?" he asked, walking around the pert backside. He received an annoyed sigh for his query.

"The only gods are reasoning and science. And they do not require prayer, only use." Jon's curiosity was swelling like the tide.

"What is it that you are looking for then, man without gods?" Another annoyed, angry sound echoed from the inside of the wood, and then the man was withdrawing and standing, uncurling from the floor like a snake rising to strike. As he took in the man's face, his curiosity wasn't the only thing to swell.

Sharp silver eyes glared at him from above equally sharp cheekbones set in skin that looked like it had never seen the sun, more than odd for a warrior and a farmer like Jon who spent all his time in the sun and had the leathery, dark skin to prove it. The man was taller than him by at least a head but slim rather than burly. He wondered what the man looked like under his unappealing robes.

"I don't often see beautiful on a man but you wear it well," Jon murmured, not caring for subtlety as he dragged his eyes up and down the long form. A dark eyebrow rose at his words and he grinned back.

"You are a farmer and a warrior, the latter has given you minor medicinal knowledge as you must treat yourself on the field. You lie with women as much as men but you do not often indulge in the companionship of men as most of the ones in your village already have a wife." Jon felt as stunned as if Thor had hit him with his hammer.

"That was... amazing!" he exclaimed, eyes wide. The other man blinked at him, seeming just as surprised by Jon's response as Jon had been by the rapid speech.

"It... was?"

"Yes, of course it was. How did you know all that?" After a pause, the man began to explain, pointing out the mud and remnants of crops clinging to his boots and the bottoms of his trousers, pointing out the blood-stained metal on his weapons from wh, the easy way he admitted his attraction to the stranger but had yet to act on it like most invaders would.

"Did I miss anything?" For a moment, he didn't know how to respond. He surprised himself into speaking by clearing his own throat, stuck to where he stood by the intense eyes refusing to break from his.

"I am a farmer, and a warrior. I have learned some things to take care of my own wounds during battle. I do not have a preference in the company I take..." Jon admitted, enjoying the triumphant smile sliding across the strangers. "But the reason I do not lie with men more often is not because most of my brothers have a wife." The smile dropped. "It is because I have learned that they distrust a man who would willingly and consistently be as the woman during the tryst."

He wasn't sure what he was expecting the man to do next, but the look of interested arousal he was given was not it. Not that he particularly minded.

"What of you, godless man? What company do you prefer to keep?" Without warning, the stranger was darting forward, employing strange fighting moves Jon had never encountered to disarm him mostly painlessly with sharp jabs of the fingers to the delicate insides of his wrists. His muscles spasmed and his axe and dagger fell to the floor. Much too startled by this sudden change in their previously-calm conversation, his natural fighter's response failed to ignite as he was turned around and shoved harshly into a low cabinet, his wrists caught and held in a firm grip against his back.

"I prefer no company at all, but I think, perhaps, I shall take yours," was whispered hotly against his ear and he moaned as a pelvis pressed against his arse, shoving his hip bones painfully into the desk. A hard length was swelling against him and he could feel his own responding, caught frustratingly in his trousers and against the hard wood.

"Then perhaps you'd best stop speaking and start taking," he growled. Teeth nipped at his ear before the hand not restricting his was shoving impatiently at his breeches, the rough fabric scraping his skin from the tightness of the laces not being undone beforehand. It only heightened his arousal that he could not fight back or help, the fingers tightening painfully around his wrists, his bones creaking from the pressure, when he attempted to get them to release.

"I may not be a warrior like yourself, but I still have knowledge on ways to cause pain." Air breezed against the bared skin of his thighs as his breeches hobbled him around his knees. There was a shuffling of fabric behind him as the man raised his robes, and then equally-bare skin was pressing against him, a long, thick, hard cock wedging between the two halves of his arse. With an aggravated snarl, Jon bucked his hips, declaring without words his disapproval of how slow the proceedings were... well, proceeding.

"I don't care how much pain you cause as long as you start to fuck me," he growled, breaking the man's hold on one wrist and using it to reach back and get his fingers wrapped around that cock. Hips stuttered against him as he began to stroke, and Jon's mind moved fast, knowing he needed something to slick the way but doubting there was any oils present. He didn't mind rough fucking, but he did mind being ruined entirely.

There was a rustle and then a thunk as a vase was deposited next to his head and he turned to look at it. Before he could ask what it was, long, pale fingers were tipping it over and, surprisingly, spilling oil over the cabinet's surface before swiping through it, and then disappearing from his view. Jon didn't need to wonder where they went though because they were immediately pressing inside of him, two fingers rather than one, and he moaned at the stretch, hips fighting to impale himself deeper. There was an amused chuckle from the stranger and the fingers around his wrists tightened as the fingers shoved in hard, once, before doing it again, and then a third time, pace unbearably slow as it continued, one hard thrust at a time.

The raider couldn't help the way he began to writhe on the fingers, stretching him beautifully but somehow not enough. Just as he opened his mouth to demand a third finger, his wish was given and a moan punched from his chest. The pace picked up with those three fingers until he was a sweaty, shivering mess. But still, it was not enough.

"Delling will hand his reign over to his daughter before you decide to fuck me," he snapped. When the fingers pulled from him suddenly, he might've been embarrassed by the high keening sound the action evoked from his throat had he not been more aroused than ever before in his life. Despite their roughness in battle, Norsemen were passionate and (frustratingly) gentle lovers. The few times he had managed to find someone to tumble with, they treated him with the same gentleness that they treated a woman, and it did nothing for him. This rough handling of him, especially during so intimate an act, was lighting up his body like a funeral pyre. Without warning, a blunt head was pressed against him and then shoved roughly inside, not bothering to slow until the stranger's cock was enveloped to the hilt.

"Freyja's grace," he shouted, writhing violently against the wood. The cock inside him did not stop, did not pause to give him time to adjust. It pulled out just as quickly and roughly as it had pierced him before pressing right back in, so much thicker and unrelenting than the fingers had been. Then those same fingers wrapped around one hip, yanking at him as feet kicked his apart as far as they would go with his breeches still around his knees, changing the angle and hitting something inside him a rare few had ever found and sparking pleasure through him like the stranger's cock was a striking rock and that spot inside him the flint.

Fingernails dug into his skin so intently that he could feel blood welling along the small crescents and the fingers around his wrists gripped him so hard that he could feel the bruises forming as he was fucked more thoroughly than he'd ever been in his life. He knew he was crying out his pleasure in earnest now and he could only hope his brothers were still too far to hear; if they interrupted this tryst, if they thought that this stranger was taking him without his permission, it would turn bloody and he would likely remain unfinished, and he did not relish either thought.

"You are not a quiet one, are you," the man whispered into his ear, his calm, breathy voice an arousing contrast to the utter way he was dominating Jon.

"If you didn't... hah... didn't fuck me so-o! well, the-en I would not be so vo-cal," he gasped and stuttered, voice breaking and hitching with each thrust.

"Sherlock," the man said suddenly, and it took Jon a moment to realise that it was not a word he recognised.

"What?" He was annoyed at having to think during a time such as this. "What does that mean?"

"That is my name," he was informed. "I would like you to shout it when you come." If anything, the pace increased, each thrust harder, deeper.

"By the gods," he gasped. "Then touch me!" He renewed his struggles on the hand binding him but it only tightened in response.

"No. You'll come by my cock alone or not all." Jon cried out in frustration. He'd never experienced a release by anything other than a hand or a woman's warmth around his cock, and despite the rising and familiar sensation building in his bollocks, he couldn't picture being able to accomplish what the stranger, Sherlock, expected of him.

"I- I can n-not," he whimpered, still writhing as much as a fish caught in a net. The man seemed incensed by his denial, picking up pace without losing any of his roughness.

"You can and you will," Sherlock snarled, voice losing composure for the first time. The sound filled him with victory even as the sensations being delivered unto him turned his mind into mush. His orgasm was building against his disbelief, the feeling of each stroke against his walls and each jab to that strange spot inside him piling one on top of another until he could no longer tell up from down with the way the room spun even when he closed his eyes or his heart from cock from the way they both pounded with arousal and adrenaline.

"Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock," he chanted as his cock started to pulse with his release.

"Yessss," that deep voice hissed against his ear, the thick length punishing him through his orgasm, keeping it going longer than any he'd ever experienced. Fingers tightening around him, the cock inside him stilling, a low moan against his ear, and a hot warmth filling him signaling the other man's own release.

The world around him continued to spin in the aftermath of the best fucking he'd ever been given, and it was slow to return to his addled mind. The strange man was laying over him, a heated blanket keeping the heat in his skin alive in the cool air of the strange building.

"You are... amazing," Jon breathed into the wood below his mouth as he rested his forehead against the cabinet.

"That is not what people usually say." Confusion and a strange indignation swept over him. How could people not find this man amazing? Even if his previous comment of taking no company meant he'd never before engaged in a tumble, the things he'd said prior staggered Jon with their intelligence.

"What do they usually say?"

"Go to hell." He rolled his head, trying to capture silver eyes with his own but the angle was wrong.

"What is hell?" There was a puff of breath against his cheek.

"A Christian concept. A place wrong-doers go when they die, filled with fire and torture."

"Oh." Jon took a moment to absorb the explanation, trying to picture it. Then he laughed. "I'll guess that others do not take your... observations kindly?" Now it was the other man's turn to laugh, though the sound seemed a bit bitter.

"No. They do not like that I can tell when they have been having affairs to those they are not wed, that I can tell when they have been gambling coin, or any other such thing they wish to be kept secret."

"Imagine that."

There was silence for another minute, and in it, Jon became of aware that the village around them had gone silent, the sounds of his brothers raiding having stopped, meaning they had had their fill and that the villagers had all been killed or captured for slavery.

The man withdrew from him suddenly, and he groaned low, the ache in his arse becoming apparent with the loss of the warm and now-flaccid cock. As the body pinning him to the wood stepped back, he found that he could no longer stand, the pleasure that had wracked him weakening his muscles to the point where he could only sink to his knees. Hands grasped his shoulders and turned him around so that he could sit comfortably before Sherlock crouched at his side.

"You're not from this village, are you?" Jon asked suddenly. Thin lips quirked into a smile.

"No, I am not. I am here to find a book. The monks have records on plants. Herbs and poisons that I find useful for my work," the man explained.

"Monks? Your work?" Monks was not a word he knew, but it was clear he was speaking of the other men in the brown robes.

"Priests," Sherlock clarified. "And my work primarily involves solving crimes. I enjoy solving mysteries, of all kinds. Those are simply the most common."

"That sound fascinating!" Jon exclaimed, mind awhirl with the possibilities. "Can I see?"

.oOo.

"JON!" Greg shouted, echoes of his cry echoing from the rest of his brothers as they searched the village. The man had disappeared when the rest of them were exploring and it was only now, with the slaves bound and weapons cleaned and put away, that they noticed their not-leader was missing. "JON!"

Each house he and the other investigated showed them empty, no sign of bloodshed in any of them. Finally, when each of the small wooden houses had been searched with no sign of his friend did they close on the only stone house in the village. Greg burst in first, axe and dagger raised to attack. The building was empty and he stared around in confusion, the smell of sex thick in his nose.

"Jon?" he called again. There was no answer.

.oOo.

The Norse warrior known as 'Jon' was never heard from again, but deep in the heart of the busiest city in England, in the deep of the night, cries of "Come on, Jon!" could be heard, and the sight of a small, blond man could be seen chasing after his dark-haired companion.

FIN

Delling: Norse god of the dawn. His daughter is Nótt, goddess of the night.
Freyja: Goddess of love, fertility, and battle.

Thanks to beautifullyheeled, beltainefaerie, janto321 (FaceOfMer), and type_40_consulting_detective for reading along and giving me some helpful suggestions along the way. Please don't forget to review and to drop by and visit me on my author tumblr (themadkatter13-fanfiction) for updates and stuff. :3