For my dear friend, Miss L, who inspired this little piece of "crack" with her very distracting Tweets.
FIRST BLOOD
The gauntlet had been thrown.
Now, the only thing that remained was what he was going to do about it.
Arthur Pendragon gripped the hilt of his sword as he stared down his opponent, ice blue eyes glinting like gemstones across the expanse of muddy, upturned earth that stood between them.
The other shook his head, one sharp, fluid movement that cut through the tense scene like a knife.
"No," he said. His voice was soft, no more than a whisper on the wind, yet it was the most powerful and commanding thing the heir of Camelot had ever heard.
Arthur raised an eyebrow. It was a challenge: one that was immediately met by the imposing specimen of a man opposite him.
"No," was spoken a second time; just as understated as before, but with even more quiet superiority, if that was even possible.
Arthur ignored the blatant order, took a swaggering step forward. His boots sank half an inch in the damp soil as he did so, and he found himself thinking of Merlin, his manservant, the one who would be scrubbing at the dry mud caking his royal boots for hours after this was over.
The brief squelch of mud against clean leather alerted him to the fact that he wasn't the only one who'd moved closer during the last few seconds.
"Your weapon" – soft, unassailable – "Remove it."
Arthur laughed. "I don't think so."
"Now."
In response, he pulled his blade in an arc around his body, high and smooth and altogether menacing.
His threat was overlooked.
The other – Eric Northman, he called himself – chuckled, and moved closer still. He practically floated across the mud mounds, his feet hardly lifting, his knees kinking in perfect synchronisation.
No human moved like this, of that Arthur was certain.
And then Eric was in front of him, long, pale hair framing a cocky smile.
"What are you?" Arthur gasped.
Eric's grin just got wider and more infuriatingly smug.
"I'm complicated," he said.
As if to prove his point, Eric grabbed at the business end of the crown prince's blade and clamped his fingers around it; hard. He didn't even flinch as the gilded steel cut through his skin, didn't bat so much as an eyelash as blood oozed from his wounds and trickled down his bare forearm, pooling in a dark, crimson ring at the base of his shirtsleeve that was rolled up at the elbow.
He pulled his bloodied hand away in a single, graceful movement, and held it up in front of his face, inspecting the damage with a look of vague disinterest.
"Impressive," was all he offered on the subject, and then he squared his jaw and stared straight into Arthur's wide, disbelieving eyes, lifted one bleeding finger, brought it to his lips and licked it.
Eric did the same with every finger, and then his palm, too, until there was not a trace of blood – or even injury – left on his milky flesh. He held up his hand for Arthur to see, palm out and absolutely flawless, as if he'd never had a cut in his life, little own one that had wept like a leaking water jug all over the sword's polished surface.
Eric glanced pointedly at the weapon, still dripping with the evidence of his former grievance, and then turned his gaze on the prince once more, his eyes as cold and ominous as an ice storm.
"I won't ask again."
His lips were smeared bright scarlet. A single drop of gleaming vermilion slid down to the edge of his chin.
Arthur dropped the sword.
"To the death, then?"
The prince was proud; he'd managed to keep his voice from shaking, despite the fear in his throat, and thus retained his honour. He knew as well as Eric did that it would be Arthur who died today, not the strange, pale man who liked himself healed like some kind of warlock.
Arthur lifted his chin a fraction, so that his opponent had to look up at him. It was how it should be. Arthur was royalty. Eric was not.
Eric shook his head; his lips quirked up at one side.
"To first blood," he corrected.
Arthur tried not to show his relief. No one would be dying today, and first blood, he could handle. Eric had shown that his blood ran just as freely as the prince of Camelot's.
Arthur may just win this yet.
He happened to glance down at his feet, now completely hidden in their leather shells beneath the mud line. A vision of Merlin, hands rubbed raw from the scrubbing, swam into the forefront of his mind, and he cringed outwardly.
He kicked off his boots without a second thought, tried to beat the excess earth matter off against the trunk of a nearby tree. Eric did the same.
When Arthur looked back, it was to see Eric staring pensively at his left shoulder.
"That's a nice jacket," the stranger commented, fingers cradling his chin as he tilted his head to the other side. "Trimmed in gold, by the looks."
"Your point?" Arthur drawled sardonically.
Eric shrugged and looked down, overly exaggerating the gesture.
The prince's eyes followed the other man's to a patch of particularly sticky mud, and he understood what had been implied in the look. The pompously regal coat he was wearing definitely wouldn't be able to withstand a liberal coating of mud, and certainly after Merlin had a go at it, the term 'pristine' would only be used in describing its 'before' appearance.
Eric had made his point. Arthur divested himself of his jacket, laying it carefully over an overhanging branch, way out of range of any stray flecks of gelatinous earth.
"Now that we've settled…" Arthur stopped mid-breath, and swallowed thickly.
The sight standing before him was only mildly intimidating, yet it was enough to squeeze the sound from his voice.
Eric Northman hadn't been wearing an overcoat, so he'd simply removed his shirt, and was now standing – legs spread apart and black leather pants pulled taut over his thigh muscles – completely devoid of clothing on his upper body, in the middle of a mud-filled clearing.
Deep, gaping frown lines appeared on Arthur's forehead. He didn't bother trying to hide them.
"Having second thoughts?" Eric teased.
Arthur's undershirt came off with a resounding rip, but only after the other man had added a condescending "My Lord" to his mocking query.
They were both equal now: both without shirts, both without boots, and both garbed in unbearably tight, lower body garments. Whether they were both equal in the physical sense, they would soon find out.
The first blow came from Arthur.
He swung his fist around and ploughed it into the side of Eric's face. There was a crack, like that of jarring bone, and a grinding sound, as teeth were mashed together by force.
And then he heard laughing.
Eric righted his head and then split his lips in a wide, effortless grin. There was not one speck of blood to be seen, not even a hint of pastel pink saliva sheen covering his perfect row of teeth.
Arthur growled: equal parts frustration and determination. He wasn't used to failure – it wasn't even a word in his vocabulary – and didn't plan on getting used to it, either. He charged at his opponent, arms spread as if he were about to envelope him in a not-so-intimate embrace; torso bent low at the waist like a wrestler on the attack.
Eric mirrored his aggressive stance and met the prince's charge head on. Their limbs tangled messily, and within a few seconds, Arthur found himself on the defensive as he began to fall. Momentum carried him to the ground, back slapping painfully against the gluggy dirt.
Arthur groaned.
The groan quickly morphed into a low hiss as something hot and sharp cut into the flesh on the left side of his neck. When Arthur felt the tell-tale, warm trickle of blood running off the peak of his shoulder, he panicked. There was no way it could be over so soon, yet Eric had said the fight would last until first blood, and Arthur knew, without a doubt, that he was bleeding.
Eric arched his back, so that the lower half of his body still weighed down Arthur's, and draw himself up on his hands, resting either side of the prince's mud-spattered head.
Arthur didn't catch the victorious gleam in Eric's cerulean eyes, nor did he see the way his pupils widened, like the moon rising through a cloud of fog, bathed in an emotion the heir of Camelot would have never in his privileged life experienced. He saw nothing, in fact, but the smear of colour on Eric's white, sculpted chin.
Blood. His blood.
"You bit me!"
Eric looked nonplussed as he replied, "So?"
"But that's cheating!" Arthur spluttered angrily.
When his chest began to vibrate with the other man's chuckles, he shoved hard into breast bone and rolled away onto his side, before levering himself up into a sitting position, his skin wet and sticky from its brief mud bath.
Eric wiped the royal's blood away with his tongue and hummed.
"The rule was to first blood. You never specified the manner in which we were to obtain this blood," was said in amused tones.
"Biting is not part of any honourable man's fight!" the prince objected.
Eric shrugged again. The whole gesture was entirely too composed for Arthur's liking. He picked up a pile of moist, gooey mud from somewhere on his right and lobbed it directly at the other man's smarmy little face. It hit Eric square in the jaw, covering what remained of Arthur's blood on his chin, making a sloppy, delicious sound as it came into contact with milky skin.
Arthur crowed with triumph.
"You'll regret that, Pendragon!" Eric spat.
For the first time in his life, Arthur Pendragon felt fear – the hard, cold, sweat forming under your armpits, breath freezing in your lungs type of fear. Eric's eyes were molten, his lips formed a tight snarl and were flushed ruby red, and his teeth were elongated, like the fangs on a jungle cat.
In short, he looked ready to kill.
No, Arthur thought; not ready to kill, ready to feast. Eric's nostrils flared in a manner that suggested he'd just picked up on an extraordinarily delectable scent. It was then that Arthur remembered he was still bleeding.
Not wanting to be anybody's meal, but especially not some foreign, pale-skinned freak of a man, Arthur sprung to his feet and launched himself at Eric. He let his body flop heavily against a bare, untarnished chest, bending his arms at the elbows to make better use of their angular tips as he pushed the other man into the depths of the mud pile.
A shower of sticky brown mud rained down on them as they struggled, tossing left and right, arms grasping, legs kicking, bodies ducking and weaving over and under blows that came from every possible direction. Arthur grunted once or twice during the tousle, his face beet red where it wasn't covered by mud, the vein on his forehead pulsating, an angry purple with the strain of it all.
Eric, however, hadn't uttered a sound since the beginning, and though he was currently being suffocated by a pink, searing hot frame of a man, he looked about as comfortable as if he were taking a leisurely stroll in the woods.
The prince had noticed his opponents' lack of exertion, and though it angered him beyond belief (and was also a little frightening – Arthur was pushing himself almost to the point of collapse, and was making little headway in actually winning the fight, yet Eric was cool, calm and collected, and seemed hardly bothered at all) he was no where near ready to give up.
His feelings on the matter were made redundant, though, when they rolled down into a shallow ditch, arms and legs fused together in a heated lock of flesh and bone. Something sharp and not at all mud-like grazed down the centre of Arthur's back, and he cried out, both in pain and defeat, for whatever it was would certainly draw blood.
Eric untangled himself from Arthur with unsurprising ease and fell back on his haunches, blue eyes dancing back and forth between the injured, panting prince and the patch of mud that was still hidden behind his chiselled frame.
Arthur groaned and rolled half-heartedly, exposing a single, jagged, traitorous tree root that glistened with royal blood.
"It is over," Eric announced in his simple, rounded tenor. "I have won."
He tilted his head back with a jolt, flicking his blonde, mud-slicked hair off his face. Even with a spattering of mud on his nose that looked like freckles, and a larger splodge near his hairline, Eric still looked like a poised and perfect specimen of the male persuasion.
It made Arthur's blood boil just looking at him. He punched the ground in retaliation and cursed when his fist hit another hidden root, splitting the skin over his knuckles.
Eric laughed for the umpteenth time. The sound echoed around the clearing, bouncing off the surrounding foliage; a hearty, rumbling boom that made Arthur want to punch something else (preferably, something a little more stable than muddy ground with roots in it).
A hand, palm up and fingers slightly curled, hung in the air between them.
"Here," the nauseatingly dignified man said, flexing his fingers up and down to indicate that Arthur should take it. When Arthur refused to acknowledge the gesture, Eric withdrew the offer with a long, drawn out sigh.
The prince stood on worn out, shaky legs. His leather pants were torn in places, the slivers of missing fabric coated in a liberal layer of half-dried mud and other miscellaneous muck from the woodland floor.
He wanted to end things on an honourable note, not only to save face for himself in this dismal of defeats, but to keep the same high level of respect for the Pendragon name that his ancestors had spilled blood and sweat to carve over generations.
Arthur rose up to his full height and looked his conqueror in the eyes.
"Next time," he told him, "we fight until first yield."
Eric nodded once, and then, with a blur of colour that would continue to perplex Arthur until their next meeting, he disappeared into the scenery.
Arthur shook his head in wonder, allowing himself the luxury of a few moments' shock, before turning his mind to much more pressing matters: the state of his princely self. From the stiffness in his muscles, the ache in his back, and the stench of his underarms, he really needed a bath.
He hoped Merlin would oblige him without too much back-chat. Arthur wasn't in the mood for jokes or sarcasm in any form, and if Merlin made even the smallest wise-crack about mud or the state he was in, he would dunk his manservant's head in the dirty bathwater.
That would teach him for being smart.