an: So, this is obviously my first attempt at Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands and its characters. There are so few out there and I had some ideas swirling around that I wanted to do. Plus, I really loved Breca, so there's that. I wanted to get into something new, and this is it.
Summary: Angered after being passed over for Thanehood, Slean has a run-in with Breca, and takes advantage of the situation as a revenge against Beowulf. But Breca is all too willing to go along.
{- BeoWulf: ReTurn to the ShieldLands -}
Channel
It was a celebration of Hrothgar's life. As Thane of Herot and Jarl of the Shieldlands. As Warrior and Husband and Father. But to Slean, it felt like a mob beating on what was supposed to be his right. His future.
Slean stood on the stair of the Main Hall, leaning against a pillar that separated each stair, a goblet of mead that he took long gulps of, a brass jug, half-full, two fingers holding the handle hanging at his side. His gaze found Rheda easily. Varr dressed in his custom yellow colours of the Varni always close by. His Uncle sitting next to her.
Hrothgar had named his wife his successor instead of his son like it should have been. Like it was his birthright to be. He was Hrothgar's son and heir. But it was just one last slap to the face before he was taken at his Deathbed.
With Hrothgar now ashes, spread in the field of the Grey Stones by the water, this was a celebration of Rheda's Thanehood as much as of Hrothgar's travel to The Hall of the Dead.
Slean poured himself more mead as lyrics of song of Hrothgar's greatness filtered through the clamour. In a few days, the Alliance would gather and a vote cast by the Thanes of each tribe would declare Rheda Jarl of the Shieldlands or not. His mother finally added name to her power and she was grasping onto it with two hands. Slean didn't think he would receive his own Thanehood until it was on his mother's Deathbed to name successor.
This was not the outset of his ruin and shame. He could easily pinpoint the moment in his life when anything he ever did wasn't ever going to good enough, in either his father's eyes and his mother's. It was when he was a boy and Hrothgar had returned from his Hunt with another boy a summer Slean's senior.
Beowulf.
The boy who had brightened Hrothgar's gaze like his son should have, but never seemed to. The boy who Hrothgar wished was his son, but was not. The boy, now man, who had scored time and again Slean's worth in his father's eyes—who was a natural and never failed to show how whatever Slean had done, the effort he dedicated, would never be enough. In the short year that Beowulf was with them, he obliterated whatever pride Hrothgar held in Slean and the future of it.
Slean had worked and scraped to regain his father's approval since the day that Beowulf have been banished from the Shieldlands. Trying to claw his way out from the boy's shadow, only to be shoved back into darkness of the unseen when any authority he held was blown away as soon as Rheda had allowed him entrance to stay.
The look on Beowulf's face when it was realized that Rheda was named Thane instead of Slean, like it should have been... surprise—pity. Slean wanted none of it. He only wished that he had managed to kill Beowulf before Rheda had interfered. If only his Huskarla weren't so incompetent.
Draining his goblet, Slean refilled it as he gaze moved from his mother, across the Great Hall, scouring the crowd for his 'brother.' A sneer curled his lip as he drank, sighting Beowulf at the other end of the chamber, conversing closely—intimately—with Elvina.
Their relationship was an open secret of Herot, but one that no one spoke of. It was their business, they never showed any intimacy in public. They kept themselves private. He was supposed to be the village's future Thane, she was their Healer. They didn't mess with her because of them, they didn't because she could tell them off like the best. Their relationship was open-ended, Elvina had insisted on it, that there could be no prearranged commitment like marriage between them because of what she was, because his mother simply wouldn't allow it. But he fell in love with her anyway.
Beowulf had taken so much from him already, Slean was damned if he was about to let him take Elvina, too.
Slean gulped down the rest of his goblet and stomped down the stair on heaving boots, dropping his goblet into the top of his near empty mead jug, and shoved it into a man's chest as he reached the bottom. The drunker man gave him a cheer, tossed aside the goblet, and drained the rest of the jug.
Slean, knee deep in his own resent-fuelled intoxication, had his eyes trained on the couple at the other end of the Hall. Pushing passed cluttered and drunken villagers to get to his goal. He was going to finish this thing between him and Beowulf once and for all.
He got bottlenecked in the center of the golden plate of the Shieldlands. His belly set on fire, Slean pushed, his shouts drowned out in everyone else's merry-making of the Feast. He was jostled in return and stumbled back unsteadily, grasping onto surrounding shoulders to steady himself. He got turned around, lost sight of his target. He spun, his head jerking back and forth in frantic, angry search of Beowulf and Elvina, but the pair had either moved and vanished into the crowd or left all together.
His hands clenched into angry fists at the latter thought. Would Elvina truly betray him like that? She was the person who he was his truest-self with, he confessed his insecurities and worries to her. She knew how he felt of Beowulf, the thick and dark shadow he was cast under in Hrothgar's eyes because of the man.
His eyes strayed and his gaze caught sight of a tall and lean figure at the head of the stair, slipping passed distracted Huskarla, through the closed heavy double doors that lead to his own chambers.
Injury to insult. Someone dare invade his private chamber. His space! Thoughts of Beowulf and Elvina were overrode. This could not go left unpunished.
Pushing through people for the stairs, he seemed to be met with less resistance than he had been before. He tromped up the stair and marched to the doors. The fury he felt at some stranger in his private space seemed to burn away some of the mead that had swamped his brain enough to think as pausing briefly at his chamber door instead of charging in without heed.
He pressed his palm flat against the thick carved wood and pushed the door slowly open, it silent in his wake. It closed just the same as he stepped in the short blind spot of his entrance, palming the pommel of his father's sword as he peered around the corner.
He was the same lean figure bathed in warm candlelight, dressed in dark blue sleeves and tunic, a plaid material cinched around his waist by a thick leather belt and draped over his left shoulder. He was at the side table, picking up golden and silver trinkets, examining them, then setting the back with clinks and clattering. Clearly drunk. Clearly not caring for the mess his left behind.
Slean clenched his teeth and he released the pommel, his hand clenched into a tight fist. No. He wouldn't use his sword. He wanted to use his hands, he wanted to feel the punishment he gave this interloper.
Dropping his fur, he continued to go unnoticed by the man. In a couple fast and quiet steps, he was at the brunette's back.
Slean grabbed the man's shoulder, spun him around, then grabbed him by the throat, shoving him back against the table. Things clattered to the floor, but Slean didn't even blink. "Thief!" he hissed.
"Whoa! Hey, hey. Easy." The man said in an accent that definitely didn't come from around here, his hands raised up in innocence. "I wasn't stealing anything. I was just looking."
"Looking," Slean scoffed.
He had a vertical scar an inch long going downward from the corner of his right blue-eye. The man nodded as much as he could with Slean's hand around his neck holding him in place, his fingers twitching as if wanting to grasp the blond's wrist, but refrained. "It's not everyday someone like me gets to see riches like these,"
"Someone like you,"
"Just a regular man trying to make it through the world, is all." He shrugged.
"So you just thought you'd come in here, look, not steal." Slean looked the man up and down. "Do you know who's chambers these are?"
"Even drunk I'm not stupid enough to steal from a Thane," he muttered. Or rather, he was caught before he cold really attempt to. "And what about you?"
Slean looked a him in silence. This man didn't know who he was? He didn't—Slean looked at the man again. Didn't recognize him as a villager of Herot—not that he knew every face—but Slean would have noticed this one. His odd, lilting accent. The clothes that definitely didn't belong in the Shieldlands. The Farlands. And who just happened to come to Herot from the Farlands as well?
"Beowulf!" Slean hissed with venom. His grip tightened on the man's throat at just the reminder of his rival.
"Oi—!" he chocked.
"Shut up!" Slean shouted at him. "You came here... with Beowulf." If he was more sober, he would have realized sooner. "Who are you? Who are you!" he repeated when the man didn't answer fast enough, giving him a little shake.
"Breca! M' name's Breca!" he cried out, his blue eyes wide at the wild look in Slean's.
"Who are you to him?" he growled. "Tell me!"
"We're friend! Just friends. He saved my life. I owe him mine."
Slean pressed his thumb under the man's jaw, rubbing roughly at the burn scar that wrapped around his slim neck that could only be from a noose. "This?" Breca's gulp was answer enough. "And what crime did you commit to deserve the noose... Breca." He tried out the man's name. He liked the way it sounded across his tongue; the power it made him feel.
"Just a misunderstanding." He said quietly.
Slean only had to look in his eyes for a moment. "Liar."
"An accident." Breca told him. "Why am I- I don't have to explain myself to you!" he started to press back against Slean, only to be shoved back into the table and held into place with a firm bump and press of Slean's hips. "Shit!" he muttered, for two completely different reasons.
"I now hold your life in my hands." Slean informed him. "I could have just as easily run you through for trespassing in my chamber."
"Your cham-" Breca's expression morphed into one of horror and fear. "You're the Tha—"
"The Thane." Slean said. Beowulf clearly hadn't informed his companion of Slean's status, giving the blond that much more power and control over the oblivious Breca.
It had been a long time since he had felt such power, held such control. Over something, let alone someone. He had such pent up rage. Such insecurity in himself, in his position. That to now hold such confidence and power... it was almost intoxicating. He had really just intended to beat the man, release some of that tension. But it would be over too soon. It wouldn't be enough for long. While besting a man in a fight could be exhilarating—he needed more, he wanted more.
He needed a Channel. A Release.
He stared a Breca, able to feel his racing heart where his forearm laid on his chest as he grasped Breca's throat. He watched the man closely, which was easy to do, seeing as they were but two feet apart. He shifted on his feet, brushing against the man. Slean couldn't have missed the stuttered intake of breath. Or the stirring of the man through his leggings.
"Fuck," Breca cursed lightly.
Slean smirked. He pushed on the man further until he was bowed backwards over the table awkwardly; pelvis thrust forward, torso in the air, and head back against the wall. "Carrying any weapons, Breca?" he murmured.
Breca narrowed his eyes. "My knife's with the smithy."
"Vishka? She does great work. But I can't just go on the word of a thief."
The corners of Breca's mouth tightened, but he said nothing. Slean, with his dominant hand still at the tall man's throat, his thumb rubbing distracting circles against the noose scar, used his left hand for weapons search, but more, it was about registering Breca's response to his touch.
His hand brushed down the man's chest, curling around his ribs. Slean wrapped his arm around Breca's hips, 'forced' to leaned close, chest-to-chest with the man as he pushed his hand in between the belt and plaid at the small of Breca's back.
A sharp exhale of breath from Breca's nose blew against Slean's face as the thief's hips responsively jerked into his as Slean palmed the strip of heated, sensitive, bare flesh under the cloth. The roughened pad of his thumb tracing over that little dint above Breca's crack.
Hand still tucked into the plaid, Slean traced his hand back around the curve of Breca's hip. Released from the material, he palmed his way down the wiry thigh, pushing back up again under the plaid. He pushed his fingers just under the thick leather belt, finding the edge of the low-waisted leggings. He brushed his fingertip across, through the courser hair at his pubic line. Breca shivered, his breath just a little fast.
When Slean reached the opposite side, he repeated the gesture down the opposite thigh, though as he traced back up this time, it was due the inside of Breca's thigh. Breca gave a minimal shift, his legs spreading a breath wider. His pupils fluctuated then blew wide a moment before Slean palmed his half-stiff bulge through the strings of his leggings.
"Searching for something in particular?" Breca managed to snark, even if it was undercut by his almost breathless tone.
"Is there anything in particular you're hoping I'll find?" Slean questioned.
"I think," Breca gave a little smirk. "You've already found what you're looking for. The question now is... will you take it?"
Slean straightened and took a step back. And pointed towards the bed.
Breca cautiously straightened. His gaze switched back and forth between Slean, the bed, Slean, the door. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Just like that?" Was it a trick? An illusion? Just how much had he really drank?
Slean was silent. His expression unchanged. Breca was not a cautionary man when it came to his carnal desires. A little smile danced over his lips, his devious blue-eyes briefly trailing up and down Slean's standing figure. His decision already made.
He took a short step from the table Slean had him pinned against, and sidestepped the man with a light chuckle—to the left. "I like where this is heading." Breca murmured, as he slowly backed towards the bed. He striped without shame, enjoying Slean's piercing gaze.
Breca looked back over his shoulder at the large bed. "It's been a while since I've done this," Breca uttered to himself. He felt a shiver go through him in anticipation. He turned back just in time to see Slean—close—before the shorter man shoved him onto the thick bed.
Breca rose himself onto his forearms, marveling at the soft material. His fingers stroking absently as he shifted on his side, again, in time to see Slean out of all his pomp. Stripped, in all his glory, hard muscle, stiff cock and hanging balls.
"Definitely found what you were looking for," Breca said in delight. "Not what I came looking for, but I'll take it happily."
"You talk too much," Slean growled, pushing Breca's shoulder, pushing his face into the bed.
"It's one of my more questionable qualities," his voice was muffled.
But luckily, soon, his speech turned into single syllable word stretched out. Middle and forefingers slicked with warm oil grabbed from a bottle at his bedside, Slean parted Breca's pert little ass, a cute dimple in his right buttock. He traced the man's puckered hole—before he pushed passed the seal.
"Ahhh!" Breca clenched his fist into the quilt underneath him, feeling the quick burn of the breach accompanied with the draw of pleasure at the edges of his rim.
Slean knuckled out before he slowly, achingly, drew back, before suddenly plunging back in. He scissored his fingers, withdrawing. He pumped. Breca was a gasping, writhing man beneath his teasing fingers. He started to rut against the bed so Slean put a stop to that, pressing his free palm against the small of Breca's back.
But even Slean's weight and advantageous position couldn't stop Breca from arching off the bed with a cry as ecstasy as Slean finally pushed deep and stroked that very beautiful place inside the thief. It was a spot that Breca so loved. The same one that made him prefer fucking a man instead of fucking a woman.
Slean smirked, feeling superior. He could feel the quavers of muscle beneath his palm as he continued to pet that nub inside of Breca. The helpless moans. This was not his fist foray with a man. "Did you make these sounds for Beowulf?" his hissed into the man's ear.
A little taken aback by the sudden stillness, Slean withdrew his fingers and Breca shifted onto his back. His chest was panting lightly, flush. The head of his cock an almost angry colour as the slit glistened with precum.
"So that' what this is about?" Breca leaned up on his elbows, body stretched out, his ankles crossed as he laid there completely naked, his hard cock pointed heavily to his belly. "Beowulf?" he laughed at the blond. "Some sort of Revenge against your brother?"
"He's not my brother!" Slean raged and backhanded him.
Nonplussed, Breca let out a scoff, his tongue slowly grazing over the bloodied corner of his mouth as he stared back at Slean. "You're a jealous man, my Thane. It's rotting you from the inside outward." He uncrossed his ankles and bent a knee, laying himself open to the man. Exposing himself. Slean couldn't help but be distracted for a moment, devouring the sight of the laid out interloper. From his long, knobby toes. The crease of his ass, heavy sac and leaking cock curved towards his hairy belly. The smug look on his face, his fingers interlaced at the crown of his head. "Don't let it eat you up and turn you ugly. You're too pretty to be ugly,"
Slean's focused snapped back at the man's words and a sneer curled his lip. "You have no idea—"
"Beowulf," Breca interrupted him, "Has never, would never, will never... touch me the way that you had intended. And not because of some Revenge scheme, but because we are truly just friends." He grabbed Slean's shoulders, taking him by surprise. Breca jerked him forward, his leg hooking around the man's waist in the same move as he flipped them. He straddled the man's waist, one arm stretched behind him grasping Slean's balls, the other pushed into his curled Mohican, staying Slean's more immediate bucking to get him off.
But the man's chest was heaving beneath his buttock and thighs. A little spittle at his lip. Rage a fire in his eyes that was backlit by his arousal that pumped his blood just as much as the adrenaline. Even as his hard cock twitched against the inside of Breca's forearm as the lean man interminably squeezed and rolled his balls in a very arousing and distracting moment, but tightening at a moment's notice if his felt Slean tensing beneath him to attempt bucking him off.
Breca literally had him by the hair and balls.
"I'm not going to hurt you, dear brooding." Breca murmured, curling over Slean till their foreheads nearly touched. The bow stretched Slean's balls and bent his stiff cock towards his belly, puppeteering it in a simile of sniffing out Breca's puckered hole close by.
Slean interrupted the breathy sound about to escape with a growl. As if this man could hurt him? Best him? No matter their positions now, it would not be this by the end. He was not going to lose what little power and control he had gained—by Beowulf's companion.
"The thing you can't seem to understand about Beowulf," Breca told him, "Is that he doesn't care or have need of Jarl or Thane to prove who is. He doesn't need a title to illustrate his strength. His character is defined by his actions, not some passed on title that is named, not earned."
"Funny words to come from the mouth of a thief and fugitive." Slean noticed in disdain. "Did you learn all that on your own or did he teach you?"
Brcea sighed. "Do you think I am stupid? That I don't know who you are? That you were passed as successor for Thane by your mother?" Slean grit his teeth. Power. Control. Destroyed. "Do you really think I care?" the brunette continued, his brow curved upward in inquiry.
Breca scraped his nails lightly against Slean's skull pleasantly and the man beneath him gave an involuntary low moan.
"You're so angry. Entitled. Petty. Jealous." Breca murmured, continuing his ministrations of massaging Slean's scalp and balls in a distracting manner as he spoke truth hitting home hard. "You knew him as a boy, don't claim to know the man. He didn't come here to provoke. He came here to be home."
"This is not his home!" he forced through gritted teeth, fighting between the responses of his body to his heart.
The brunette said nothing as he released the Thane's son's curl, and drew his hand down the furious and conflicted man's face with spread fingers. His fingertips traced down the plains of Slean's face; the bridge of his nose, his eyelids, his cheekbones. His lips. Down the taut column of Slean's neck.
Brece braced a hand on Slean's chest and shifted his weight back onto his hips. Slean was stilled from his immediate response to throw Breca off and regain the upper hand as the leaky head of his cock caught the edge of Breca's crack. Breca's grip on Slean balls shifted to the base of the man's cock, lifting it and lining his crack with precum. Slean's breath skittered.
"I'm sick of it. Of running. Politics." Breca's thighs tensed as he rose himself. "I just want to be fucked."
A sound caught in Slean throat as the angry head of his cock brushed against Breca's still slicked entrance. His hands brushed up Breca's thighs, feeling the hair under his palms. His grasped Breca's narrow hips, leaving finger dents in the flesh. He met the man's eyes. He pushed Breca's hovering hips down same as he thrusted his hips upwards.
Slean grunted as he was sheathed tightly in the hot tunnel, his eyes rolling as he arched, overwhelmed, his heels digging into the mattress.
"Aah!" Breca cried out, both in pleasure and a bit of pain. Fully seated. No pause. His enterence had been stretched with two of Slean's oiled fingers, but it had felt so long ago. And it wasn't like he'd been relaxed since then. Slean's dick was definitely thicker than two fingers.
Breca panted heavily, sweat beading his forehead. It had been six month since he'd been through this. Since being in this position (though not exactly) had gotten him nearly lynched. Getting caught by Kye's older brother... he just hadn't wanted to die. It had never been his design. Nothing usually was.
Knowing his body, Breca had already started a gentle rock. Working himself on Slean's thick cock, stretching himself beyond the burn and dancing into the pleasure. And soon, so sweetly so, his hips started to lift up. Slean's heels dug into the mattress as he thrust his hips, but the precious slid of his cock into Breca was compromised by the limited position the thief had him in. It was passed time he took back control.
Slean drew his hand down Breca's hip and grasped behind his knee. The other palmed his dimpled buttock. "You want to be fucked, Breca?" Breca gave him a condescending smirk.
As Breca lifted, Slean used the momentum to make his move. He tossed Breca off him, wrestled the lean man onto his stomach, hand at the nape of his neck. He pushed the man's face into the pillows, his ass in the air. Slean didn't even let him get settled into the position before he was sliding home into his tightness in a smooth stroke, grunting.
Breca's chuckle turned out into a whorish moan as the mushroom head of Slean's leaking cock stroked that beautiful place inside Breca for the first time like a bowstring.
"I'll show you just what it means to be fucked by a man like me." And he started thrusting, relentless, driving the man towards mindlessness as he hammered Breca's prostate. He was going to make sure this interloper knew his place in Herot.
Slean didn't kiss his mouth. But he had no trouble kissing everywhere else. Licking. Biting. Marking—claiming, before Beowulf could. Signing something that was the other man's as his. He felt a superiority flush through his veins.
Sweat glistened on their bare skin. Breca scrambled for something to grasp, to stop himself from shattering even before they broke the glass ceiling. He moaned the warrior's name as his damp hair was grasped, his head pulled back, and teeth sunk bruisingly into the tender flesh at the junction of his taut neck.
Slean's victory… when the world exploded in the best way possible, and he released himself inside the snaky thief.
...
Slean lay with one arm stretched back behind his head, his furs not covering much as all as he watched the lean man. The stretch of the skin where his marks lay as the thief bent. Feeling relaxed and powerful. "Say one word of this..." the threat was clear. "Come when I call."
"Who says I'm staying?" Breca question indignantly. As much as a man could while hunting around naked for his scattered clothing.
"If I know Beowulf," Slean sneered. "He won't be able to help himself. And where he goes, you follow."
Breca straightened and glanced askance at the man. "Sleep with a man and you know his heart," Breca commented in susurration. "It's a mutual road."
He left, dressed, to the blond's silence.
...
"Well," Breca remarked, coming to a halt in the entrance chamber of the Hall where the Feast had been held, to find Beowulf standing by the body of Herot's Reeve, sword drawn, and surrounded by Huskarla. "This is awkward."
"You!" Varr noticed him. "What are you doing in here?"
"Um, I drank a little too much—" he started the lie.
Varr narrowed his eyes. "You're Beowulf's man, aren't you? I saw you ride in with him. Take him!" he barked at the Huskarla.
Brinni, the closest, grabbed him by the bicep before Breca could shrink into the wall. "Oi." The thief protested. "I'm innocent of this," Breca waved his freehand down at Beowulf with a light cringe, "At least."
"We'll see." Varr said.
Breca swallowed.
He wasn't the only one to jump as the chamber doors behind him opened and Slean strode out. The Thane's paused as he took in Breca next to him being held by Brinni, the Huskarla and Varr, Beowulf standing with Bayen's body.
"What the hell is going on, Varr?" the scene looked pretty explanatory itself. "He hand nothing to do with it." Slean waved a dismissive hand at Breca without out even a glance. "Release him."
After a moments hesitation, Brinni released Breca.
Breca paused awkwardly, his glance shooting between Slean and Beowulf (who stared back from his position on lower ground), and even Varr a couple times. "Should I...?" he cleared his throat.
"Leave." Both Slean and Varr said.
"Right." He quickly left the Hall, shooting one last glance at Beowulf.
"So, Beowulf," Slean remarked, descending the stairs. His night with Breca completely dismissed from mind and manner as he was once again focused on his rival. "You're a murderer now? Can't say I'm surprised."
Breca stood outside, the conversation cut-off from his ears. Surprisingly, not his most problematic morning-after. All he had to do was save his friend.
"This'll be fun." He scratched a hand through his hair. "How to go about it though," he mused. Beowulf had said no widows, didn't seem to have done him any good either way.
[end]
{- BeoWulf: ReTurn to the ShieldLands -}
Well... this definitely didn't turn out how I had first intended. Though I think it went pretty well. Please review. Thanks for reading!
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