Ragnar's cup was empty but he tried hard to coax the last drops out of it. When he rose from his reclined position his head spun and he had to put his hand down behind him to steady himself. Blue eyes looked all around the tent for the jug but could not find it.
"Ragnar," Athelstan muttered several feet away, hand shaking the jug as it was raised.
"Ah," he grinned, leaning forward and stretching his arm out.
Without looking past his parchment Athelstan poured the ale in his cup, somehow knowing when it was full. With unsteady vision Ragnar looked at him – so focused on whatever he was inking on that paper. The English King had given it to him and he'd barely taken his attention away from it since. For an hour Ragnar had been watching him silently in the candle-lit tent, occupying himself with drink. He was jealous.
"Do you like it here?" Ragnar asked once he'd settled back down.
"In England, or here with you?" He could just barely make out Athelstan's grin.
The nearby waves almost masked his response. "Both."
A moment passed, and Ragnar's chest tightened with more with jealousy. Finally Athelstan stifled it with his answer: "I'd most like to go wherever you go."
"So, you would not stay?" he smiled, tightness replaced with warmth – although that was mostly the ale.
"I would if you wanted me to."
Ragnar went back to silently drinking and Athelstan went back to silently inking. He had changed so much. His hair was long, dirt marked his face, his eyes were changed with the memories of battle. He was no longer a priest. He had gotten stronger. Handsomer. His 'soul' had become that of a warrior's.
"Do you remember when we first met?" he mused.
Athelstan breathed a laugh and glanced at him. Ragnar willed to keep that gaze but they immediately went back to his parchment. "I do all I can to try to forget."
"Do you miss being a priest?"
"No," he answered immediately, and Ragnar thought he was lying for his sake. "I cannot imagine feeling at home there, now."
"You had more freedoms as my slave." Ragnar grinned. "What lives do priests have? No joy. No drinking, no fighting, no sex." The king saw his companion swallow hard at that last musing and so he pried: "Did you never want to?"
"I was truly frightened of sin."
He grinned more. Athelstan hadn't answered. "Did you never think of it?"
A moment of silence. "I prayed lustful thoughts away."
Ragnar breathed his own laugh. "Thoughts of what?"
Athelstan shrugged as he continued to focus on his work, refusing to look across the tent to his drunken king. He wanted to hear of the ways Athelstan had fought off this sin of lust, the ways he'd squirmed his hips to will away something swollen and pressing.
"Did you never wake up from a dream, with… some matter at hand?"
That nervous smile made Ragnar smile, too. "What are you asking me, Ragnar?"
"Your little priest hands," he elaborated, sitting up and inching closer to fill a cup that was still almost full, "did they never wander?" His own words were causing him to pant.
The only thing Athelstan dared to acknowledge was: "Little?" Finally he let his work rest and brought his hands to his own lap, looking down at them. Ragnar leaned closer and did the same. "They are not little."
"They were when I met you. Little and soft. Now they're strong." His own hand came to brush fingertips over a calloused palm. "Rough. Like mine. But if you keep that up, they'll go soft again." He playfully nodded toward the paper. "What are you doing?" The drunken king crawled to sit beside him, leaving his cup on the ground. Eyes flicked over the ink on the paper: black lines, some colored with reds, blues, yellows, and greens. Words, he imagined. He tried to see the artistry in it – tried to look at it the way Athelstan did. He could only keep glancing at his priest's scarred hands, somehow art themselves.
"Nothing of importance," he assured, looking again at Ragnar who was not half a foot from him. "I had many thoughts," he finally answered. "I lived there a long time, and I prayed them away. And then you came."
"Are you glad?"
Ragnar watched Athelstan's eyes as they glanced his face over. He took the distraction to stare at those lips. That faint grin tightened his chest once more. "Yes," he nodded.
"I am, too. You are my favourite, Athelstan." He was speaking so softly, so breathy through gentle panting. His head was spinning still, and it was worse now, but he hadn't touched his cup in so long he'd forgotten where it was.
He whispered back, "I know."
The king's racing mind had no distinguishable thoughts as he leaned closer, damp lips parted to fit with Athelstan's, jutting to kiss a lower lip. The moment was still and silent, gentle which was so unlike Ragnar, until Athelstan pulled from him with furrowed brows. Color drained from Ragnar's heated cheeks and he would've been unable to speak if he'd had anything to say.
"Ragnar," Athelstan whispered, something he took between a confused question and an upset statement.
Frowning, Ragnar pursed his lips to savor the taste of him, leaning back. They stared at each other and just when the king was to look away a strong, rough hand came up to grasp the bare space of his jaw and neck – which suddenly felt like it'd been empty before. It took him a moment to react (in Ragnar's defense, he was clumsy with ale) but soon their mouths were together again, molding, an eager tongue coming to lick over Athelstan's lower lip. His head turned to nuzzle nose against nose and kiss him more – mouths continuously attached, Ragnar frenzied like he could not get enough of him and Athelstan nervous but those hands still grasping.
They disconnected to breathe, both panting with lips swollen, wet, and parted. Again they looked at each other, searching for explanations neither could offer in lustful expressions. Ragnar had never kissed a man and he supposed neither had Athelstan. He had never wanted to – but Athelstan was different. He loved him in a way he had never loved anyone. And he told him that.
"I know," the priest whispered once more. Athelstan crawled backwards and Ragnar followed. He watched as one of those hands he loved reached back to blindly feel for the bed, soon pushing himself up onto the wooden frame. Somehow they needed no other words, like Athelstan's 'soul' was partner to Ragnar's, if he had one.
Upon his knees the king sat, hands reaching for the priest's thighs as he himself leaned down to again connect lips. They kissed feverishly and deeply, like lovers long since separated. Athelstan broke it with a hard exhale and Ragnar groaned in response, leaving no time to waste and nuzzling hard into his neck to resume affection there instead. Those scarred hands roamed, slipping underneath the neck of his tunic, raising follicles on his flesh at the warmth of his touch on a neglected back.
He pulled roughly at the frayed string of Athelstan's trousers. Ragnar could not recall a time he was ever so aroused. The skin his hands roamed once the priest had pulled off his upper layers was different than Lagertha's or Aslaug's. It had more defined curves of muscle and bone, more raised scars from the battles he'd seen. Rough. Strong. Right.
"I've thought of you often," Ragnar whispered in a heavy but hushed voice. "Sometimes you are all I think of."
"Ragnar," Athelstan said, in the same way as before. He pulled from his neck to look into those eyes, hands stopped their descent down his bare rib cage. He seemed to be struggling for words. "Ragnar, I've… you know I have never-"
"I don't care," the king assured. "I need to feel you." Hands smoothed over the curves of his abdomen and the lightly-haired skin there.
The Englishman stared for another moment, then was overtaken with a sudden ferocity that surprised his king. Those hands grasped either side of his face and kissed him so hard it almost hurt his own clumsy lips – and then they reached lower, pulling his tunic up until Ragnar's chest was as bare as the other's. By his belt Athelstan pulled him up further, onto himself as he laid back on Ragnar's bed. The heat that radiated from them would easily dampen the furs they laid atop.
They were together now, skin against skin, so warm and overwhelming that both of them were breathing loudly. By now the experienced king was so hard it hurt and he could only imagine how Athelstan felt – he could feel him through the fabric that separated them. When he finally inched opposing trousers down to free his cock (watching all the while, focusing hard through his drunkenness) he wished that candle was closer so he could fully see it.
"What do you think?" panted Athelstan and Ragnar could hear the grin through his words. Instead of responding the king moved down to take him into his mouth, grasping the base to keep him still. Immediately the priest moaned and Ragnar did the same – he was salty and sweet, from a day of work and only several minutes of lust. He took it down as far as he could and kept it there; he knew how good a hot, soft, wet throat could feel and hoped his own was any measure. Two hands caressed the back of his head and soon Ragnar reached his own up to press against that mouth. If he moaned too loudly, he worried, it might rise the others in their tents.
Already Athelstan was leaking but just slightly, as if to give warning to Ragnar that he was close – or praise him for good work. "Stop," the priest muttered breathlessly after only a few minutes of the king's mouth not parting once from his cock.
He did, lifting himself up and back to eye-level in concern. Athelstan was squirming lightly underneath him, eyes closed tight and lips pursed in concentration. Finally his gaze opened to him and he laughed, teeth bright in the darkness, so Ragnar did the same (and partly in relief). "What?" the king whispered in confusion.
"I didn't want to finish yet."
Ragnar's lips parted. He desperately wanted that. "Yet?"
"I haven't paid you any attention, yet." Athelstan reached down and undid Ragnar's leather belt, who soon pushed the cloth down the rest of the way and discarded it on the ground. "A great tragedy for a king." He grinned more – teasingly, almost. Hands slightly stained with ink came down to stroke at a cock slightly larger than the priest's, both pulling and pushing at sensitive skin around a swollen gland.
They kissed again – Athelstan's hands working at Ragnar, Ragnar's slipping underneath the priest to hold him closely and his hips thrusting forward to grind as well as he could against opposing hips. Athelstan huffed at the taste of himself but Ragnar could only smile and resume the broken affection, tongue wandering deeply inside a waiting mouth.
Bare skin thrust against bare skin, cock slipping against cock, still slightly damp from Ragnar's saliva and shared sweat. Athelstan's breaths turned to moans, every exhale a noise of pleasure. They could no longer kiss so the king stared at his priest, glancing over his face to savor the expression. Their gazes locked and there was something intimate enough about that moment that they both succumbed to waves of ecstasy, Ragnar's core filling with a deep desire. Desperate grinding became slippery as Athelstan's torso became marked with ribbon after ribbon of milky seed, a kingly hand again clasping over a loud mouth. He panted out against his cheek, eyes almost crossing as they stared too closely at Athelstan's – whose soon became unfocused and almost rolled upwards in pleasure.
Trembling, gasping, slipping over each other, their squirming slowed for minutes until it stopped. Blue eyes burned with emotion he'd never felt after something as simple as sex. He willed it away.
"Ragnar," the priest whispered for the fifth time that night, looking at him and soon grinning. "I think you are my favourite, too."
The king matched his lips and reached down to pull the other's trousers up over his overly-sensitive cock – almost a sweet gesture. It was merely a desire for the other to be comfortable. "You think?"
"I will need more convincing."
Ragnar smirked. Athelstan was far from a priest, now, and perhaps too much like a Lothbrok himself. Ragnar had never trusted anyone as much as he trusted Athelstan, whether in times of deep connection or childish banter. "By way of my mouth, or of my exploits as king?"
Those graceful fingers rose to slip between Ragnar's lips, Athelstan whispering, "Are they not the same thing?"