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“My liege!”
Caedmon watched Ferrantino flit across the room towards him. As always, he was dressed in colourful silks that floated in the air like the tails of an ornamental fish in water and with every step, the golden bells he had tied around his right ankle tittered with high chimes.
“I’m fine,” Caedmon said, before Ferrantino had reached him.
Frowning, he waited for the healer to finish tying the bandage around his arm. He still wanted to do it himself sometimes, even though she was most certainly more skilled. The position of Your Majesty and the accompanying comforts seemed to fit ill even after two years.
Ferrantino fussed with Caedmon’s tunic, checking to see if his leg was okay before he perched on his knee.
“Wiglaf told me all about the bandit cave you stormed. I’m composing a song about your deeds.”
Caedmon shook his head. His deeds in general seemed to be a rich topic to mine, if the amount of songs that existed were anything to go by, but hadn’t singers like Ferrantino made it so themselves, his legend rising only as it was retold? Nevertheless, he did know his people thought him heroic now. A king who rode at the head of every battle, who fought monsters to protect the peasants, who went out to root out the bandits blighting the roads to the crown city himself – but it shouldn’t be special, really. Yet his people had spent thirty years under Caedmon’s uncle, who was uninterested in his country and bored by his duties, and so oblivious to the rules of war while at the same time convinced he was a master that he’d gotten his two adults heirs killed before he himself had died to an embarrassingly obvious ambush. Caedmon, head of the crown city guard at that point, had been called in to clean up the mess and watch over his uncle’s last remaining spawn Grecia. As the queen, now fully orphaned and not even a year old at the point of her father’s death, was unlikely to hold court, he’d even gotten a crown for his trouble.
He rather thought people had figured he would fuck it up, too, and some had probably hoped so because his death would make it a lot easier for them to make the baby disappear or raise her into a puppet ruler. After all, Caedmon might have never cared about the throne, but he would have fought to protect an innocent child, and the city and castle guards would have likely followed him to battle, and that would already mean half a civil war and the crown city under siege. A mix of stubbornness, pride, and the need to protect his cousin that had kept him alive as he whipped his court into shape, forced peace on the borders and stilled rumours of noble infighting. It did make him feel embarrassed every time a new hymn in his honour was composed, however. He was just doing what he had always done, keeping things level and safe. The palace and the harbour district had more in common than any of his courtiers would have wanted to admit, anyway.
“Can’t you sing about sensible things?” he asked.
“Your Majesty, no one wants to hear a song about sensible things,” Ferrantino gave back with a sweet smile.
Caedmon snorted. Ferrantino was probably right about that.
“Are you coming to the great hall for dinner?” Ferrantino asked, his lithe body leaning into Caedmon’s side as his slender fingers carded through Caedmon’s long, ashen blonde hair. “Or can I bring Queen Grecia to your quarters so we can eat in private?”
Caedmon saw a young knight at the door throwing Ferrantino a bemused glanced. He was so bold about his affection that a lot of people needed a bit of time to get used to him.
“I have to show my face, lest anyone decides I was killed by bandits, after all,” he said.
“I suppose so. But you know, you always make me wait to have you for myself!” Ferrantino said, his full lips pulling into an adorable pout before he slipped off Caedmon’s lap.
For his complaining, however, Ferrantino appeared bright and charming before the court not ten minutes later. He never misbehaved in public – in truth, he was never anything less than enchanting. While Ferrantino charmed his lords and ladies, Caedmon fed his young cousin and then let her run off to dance to Ferrantino’s lute with the children of his retainers. When a maid came to take the little queen to bed, Ferrantino hugged her and made sure her tiara sat straight in her curly hair before he sent her to say good night to Caedmon.
“Your – friend is such a soft soul,” the castle’s head guard Hylda said by Caedmon’s side, after he’d handed the girl to her maid.
Caedmon wasn’t a good courtier, which meant he wasn’t a good liar, so he had to hide his face behind his goblet of wine.
“He’s very good with people,” he said, which was not a lie, though not quite the same thing. However, Caedmon had chosen his words carefully.
-
Apparently, Ferrantino had been watching the healer very closely, since his thumb somehow found the cut on Caedmon’s arm even as it was covered by the bandage, pressing down hard on the spot.
“I get jealous when others hurt you, you know?” he said, smiling brightly up at Caedmon from where he sat at the edge of the bed next to him.
“I doubt this one was trying to take my clothes off,” Caedmon said sardonically, gritting his teeth at the pain. “He wasn’t waving that sword around, just the steel one.”
Ferrantino chuckled and dug his finger in even harder. “I don’t care. They still shouldn’t get to.”
The pressure abated. Though Ferrantino enjoyed being mean to him, Caedmon could always be secure in the knowledge that he would not chance actually damaging Caedmon permanently. This was a good thing because sometimes, Caedmon was pretty sure he would have let him.
“You’ve been very brave, though,” Ferrantino said, his slender hand landing on the back of Caedmon’s neck. He couldn’t have forced Caedmon to do a damn thing, but Caedmon bowed his head and allowed Ferrantino to drag him off the bed until he knelt by the side of it. “Everybody was talking about you at dinner. Your knights said you fought four men at once and came out victorious.”
He could hear genuine admiration in Ferrantino’s voice, even as he forced Caedmon’s forehead to lean against his thigh. Caedmon shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m not fool enough to pick such a fight,” he mumbled against Ferrantino’s soft skin, “but it’s not like I’ll lay down my sword once they surround me.”
“Since you don’t like my songs,” Ferrantino teased, “I guess I’ll have to reward you in another way, Your Highness, won’t I?”
Caedmon grunted, trying to hide the fact that he could already feel sparks running down his spine.
“Your songs are brilliant. Everybody sings them. That’s why I can’t stand the ones about me,” Caedmon grumbled.
Now Ferrantino did laugh in earnest, grasping him by the scruff of the tunic to pull him up again.
“I’m just too talented,” he joked. “Get up, get up. I’m going to do something I won’t sing about... who knows who might be looking to share with me if I did.”
Caedmon doubted there would be many takers. Very few people looked at him the way Ferrantino did – or looked at him at all, rather than at the crown on his head. But Ferrantino, who was barely tall enough to reach his chin and just strong enough to hold a lute, had taken one glance at him, the head of the city guard, and decided that this was the man he was going to put on his knees. Caedmon had thought he was mad at first, and then figured he himself was mad for enjoying it so much, and now he’d decided he did not care if they were both ripe for the madhouse if it felt this good. That had been three years ago and then unremarkable, since a popular bard and a head guard who happened to have blue blood had been a good enough match, though no one, of course, guessed what they truly got up to behind closed doors. Caedmon could only be grateful that Ferrantino had stuck by his side even as his life was turned fully upside down. He loved Ferrantino’s company, his advice, his wit… and the way only he could get Caedmon to relax.
As he rose, so did Ferrantino, who motioned with his delicate hand for Caedmon to turn around. No matter how many times they had done this, Caedmon still felt the hair on his arms rise when Ferrantino got that look in his eyes.
“Why don’t you take off your clothes?” Ferrantino suggested sweetly. “It’s such a warm evening.”
“So caring,” Caedmon mocked.
Ferrantino’s giggle tinkled like his bells. “You know me. Since I am so nice, shouldn’t you be quick to listen? Turn around to the bed, too.”
Caedmon turned and undressed as fast as he could, which, considering he very much felt today’s fight in his bones and bruised flesh, wasn’t very speedy. Usually, Ferrantino would have egged him on, or even punished him, but he was merciful on him this time. As Caedmon shook off the fancy leather and smooth satin, he felt Ferrantino’s gaze burn a hole in the back of his skull.
He could hear the bells jingle with the gentle rhythm of Ferrantino’s steps closing in on him from behind.
“Can you lean on your arms, strong king, after such a long day?”
“For you, I’ll deal with it,” Caedmon said, and because he heard the serious question behind the mocking tone, he added: “I’m not so old yet that a few smacks and stabs can take me out.”
Ferrantino slapped his backside, a stinging strike that Caedmon had taught him, making use of a sharp angle and the tensed flat of his hand where his strength couldn’t impress. “Arrogant,” Ferrantino tutted. “You almost don’t return to me and you’re still joking? Did it not hurt bad enough?”
Ah, so that is what we are doing.
Ferrantino had a silver tongue, a good heart and a fast mind. However, when steel met steel, he could only stand at the side and hope that Caedmon wasn’t delivered back to him from the fight with a spear through his gut. How could he not be worried sometimes?
Caedmon knelt on the bed. Under other circumstances, he might have resisted a bit for the fun of it, but it seemed that Ferrantino needed to calm himself with their game today, too.
Since he went down easy, he heard Ferrantino make a pleased noise behind him. Ferrantino himself had not undressed, as Caedmon could feel the silks he wore slide against his naked skin, moving just as smooth against him as Ferrantino’s fingers, which were now covered in oil, painting a line down his spine.
He plunged two fingers into him quickly, without a word of warning, heedless of the painful stretch. Caedmon groaned.
“For tonight, you’re going to stay here,” Ferrantino said, “open for me to use as often as I like. If you try to move, I might even tie you down. Wouldn’t you look lovely spread out on the bed, with one limb tied to each bedpost?”
Caedmon gulped in air. Damn this man’s way with words.
The preparation was barely worth the name with how hard Ferrantino went at it. Caedmon had a suspicion that Ferrantino just couldn’t resist the urge to use his fingers inside of him because it always made Caedmon twitch, rather than because he was trying to ease the way. Ferrantino teased inside of him with no less dexterity than he showed handling his lute and wooden flutes, and Caedmon dropped his head between his shoulders as he swallowed the louder noises.
“You’re very pretty like this, too,” Ferrantino purred.
“Strange for a poet to choose a wrong word like this,” Caedmon gave back, almost laughing.
Perhaps he could be called handsome, in a particularly hard-edged way, and only in the dim light of a back alley during the night shift, but pretty?
Another smack to his backside.
“You said it, I’m the poet. I know better. Look at those long beautiful lines of muscle… How could I call you anything else?”
Ferrantino pulled back his fingers and from a whisper of cloth and a slick sound of skin on skin, Caedmon knew what he was doing. However, as he threw a greedy look over his shoulder, Ferrantino reached forward with his other hand and directed his head to turn again with a sharp tug of his hair.
“Stay like this,” he demanded. “I’m the only one who gets to look. Since you don’t want to appreciate beautiful things, you will have to keep your eyes forward.”
“You sure are bossy today,” Caedmon decided. Gods, he loved it.
“Just today?” Ferrantino asked, voice laced with humour, and rammed into him with one stroke.
Caedmon almost toppled onto his face. The size of Ferrantino’s cock did not at all match his diminutive statue and even after years of training, taking him all at once was a challenge.
He felt Ferrantino’s hands roaming his broad back, as if to reassure himself that Caedmon was still under him, with him. Caedmon leaned back into his touch and this did not get him a punishment for moving without Ferrantino’s permission, as he’d suspected it wouldn’t.
Ferrantino reached up as high as he could in his position, kissing Caedmon between the shoulder blades as he fucked into him with quick, hard thrusts. With his face in the pillow and his ass in the air, Caedmon made a bad image for a guard captain and a worse for a king, but Ferrantino was murmuring sweet words of praise that he was not strong enough to find lies in. He came when Ferrantino dug his hands into his hips like he wanted to imprint the press of his fingertips as scars, moaning Ferrantino’s name into the pillows.
His head was swimming, but he just managed to flex the muscles that Ferrantino had given such praise to, tightening around him. Ferrantino gasped, cursing quietly, and Caedmon grinned to himself that he’d made him lose grip on his pretty words for once.
Ferrantino’s seed dripped between his thighs as Ferrantino pulled back and spread out next to him on the bed. He gently tapped Caedmon’s arm, telling him he was allowed to lie on his side. They were silent for a long moment, content to be in each other’s presence, looking at each other.
“The four bandits... try not to do that too often,” Ferrantino said. “You’re strong, but you’re not invincible.”
“Don’t worry. You’re the one calling me a hero in the songs, but I don’t intend to do more than a soldier has to do.”
“And yet, you keep ending up in situations that any half-decent bard would be forced to make songs about. Sometimes, I wonder if people aren’t goading you into them.”
When Caedmon had brought Ferrantino to court, people had generally assumed he was there for a bit of entertainment in bed and in the great hall at feasts, when he wielded his instruments and clear voice. Caedmon marrying and producing heirs himself would have complicated the royal line further, so everybody was eager to accept Ferrantino. When he watched the future queen for Caedmon, besides, they figured he was just an idle playmate to her, and should he get in a way of some courtier’s early attempts to get in the child’s head, it was thought to be because he was blithe and unassuming, like a sheep wandering in the way of a noble coach and inadvertently blocking its path. Caedmon, meanwhile, knew that Ferrantino’s influence was the best chance little queen Grecia had to get some sense and smarts into her, as Ferrantino was already his own best advisor, too, after all. Neither of them had any intention of changing the impression Ferrantino made on the court, though. It was by far the best way to keep him safe.
“Well, those bandits were real, but you’re right to be concerned. Don’t worry, though, if anything seems like too good an opportunity for heroics to me, I will run it past you. You know I’m not so hot-headed that I storm after everything like some young buck.”
“True,” Ferrantino said with a playful smile. “You have always been that way. I remember all those people you used to disappoint by not being goaded into tavern fights…”
Caedmon grinned. “I think if they could, some of these courtiers would like to simply sock me in the jaw, too, but they have to be clever about it here.”
Ferrantino laughed and curled into his side, placing his head on Caedmon’s shoulder. Now they looked the way people probably imagined them watching from the outside, if it were not for the seed between Caedmon’s legs and the possessive arm Ferrantino had thrown over his chest.
Caedmon could never promise Ferrantino the one thing he wanted to say, that he would not die; he was not so foolhardy to make that bet with fate, and Ferrantino was not stupid enough to think anyone could be certain of such a promise. However, other than death, there really wasn’t anything that could stop Caedmon from always coming back to Ferrantino.