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They were just beginning to get warm again, cheeks and fingertips flushed red like embers and the snowflakes that had been scattered in their hair melting into little droplets that they shook off to keep from soaking into their clothes. Their cloaks hung up to dry, similarly dripping onto the floor and leaving a small clear puddle. Garmr, too, left a puddle around his paws, his tail thumping on the floor as he watched Bjorn move the pan, leaden with food, out of the fire.
All day they had been out on the hills that knelt down from the towering mountains further south. The cold bitter winds that often blew from their peaks had been a softer breath today, and the air had hung about them fresh and clear, like an invisible crystal through which winter could be appreciated for its stillness, its luster. But now they were glad to be in the warm dim of their cottage, the woodsmoke a pleasant curtain and the fire replacing the blinding white of the snow.
Bjorn finished the cooking, pulling the pan out of the hearth. The room almost immediately filled with the fragrance of dried herbs and the oily smell of the lard cooking the herbs back to succulence, the murky-damp smell of fresh pike replaced with its subdued cooked scent, mild and flaky. It was always satisfying to watch a catch cook well; and how lovely the fish had been when he’d set aside his rod in the brilliant snow and held up the long speckled mail to the weak winter's sun, way more food than they needed for their night meal.
Bjorn moved a portion into each of their bowls and gave the rest to Garmr who had been getting more and more impatient, his head resting between his paws as he whined, as close to Bjorn’s side as he could get without being chastised. His large brown eyes looked soulfully up at them both as the cooking filled the room, and when his bowl was set down it was likely that the food in it would be gone before the both of them had finished relocating onto the bed where they often ate. Sometimes Bjorn wondered if the mutt even tasted the food or if it just dropped right down into his stomach, and he shook his head at the creature— easy to understand how Skoll and Hati could have such an appetite as to consume the sun and the moon, if this was how simple earthly dogs acted.
Both men worked without conversation, just the peace of the stoked fire and the pan scraping quietly on the stones, the wind blowing harmlessly on the walls. The silence wasn’t so much an absence as a fullness, supple and busy. Next to Bjorn, Askeladd finished up the flatbread, the smell of warm barley ready to soak up oils and herbs. He shuffled over to the bed with the bread and two cups brimming with ale and Bjorn soon followed, the both of them settling into their meal. As expected, Garmr looked up from his bowl, already finished.
After a while Askeladd broke the silence with a contented hum, gesturing to Bjorn with a slice of a filet stuck on the tip of his seax, a soft cloud of heat steaming from the meat.
“Damn Bjorn, you know how to spoil a man, even without those fancy spices we used to get.”
Bjorn could feel a heat tint his cheeks, though he was certain it would be difficult to notice with his face already reddened from leaning over the fire.
“Glad you think so.”
Askeladd tilted his head, curious eyes gleaming sharply.
“Where’d you learn it from?” he asked after a moment of consideration, taking a bite.
Bjorn’s brow furrowed.
“Hmm? Oh… my mother.”
The cottage was quiet once more as Bjorn considered, his expression flicking back for a moment to a long-distant past, a past that seemed another life entirely, as if he had lived as two people in one body. The shade of forest-rich brown that was his eyes faded into the distant veil of memory and loss before returning back to vividness.
“I told you how she was unable to do a lot after father? So I had to cook most of the time.” He shrugged. “But she was usually well enough to guide me through what to use and how much and so, that’s how I learned.”
Askeladd doesn’t answer right away, his churning thoughts visible behind the blue of his eyes as an inner light, a spark of spirit that had first drawn Bjorn to him all those years ago. But just what was he thinking?
It had been necessary for Askeladd and his men to learn how to sew and cook and know how to patch up after battle on their long summer raids away from wimminfolk, but Askeladd had always understood Bjorn to not just learn and be uncannily talented in such things, but to enjoy them, to find a stability in the work when their raids and long voyages were anything but. Bjorn was good at most things, Askeladd thought, not without a swell of pride in his chest.
Askeladd was certain Bjorn could make a princely garment if he had the material for it, woven and sewn with his own neat, meticulous hand. He’d witnessed firsthand and many times Bjorn’s talent in the healed scars of his own body, neat stitches even in the most jagged and irregular wounds. He could’ve been a damned good healer if such wasn’t the domain of women— Eir all but confirmed it, always calling upon Bjorn to help her with illnesses and injuries as they wintered at Gorm’s, using the excuse that she needed ‘muscle.’ Askeladd may have been the talk of all the maidens in the village, no doubt because of the status he would’ve brought any new wife, but Bjorn had always been well liked— genuinely liked— by all the working women, the widows, their shrewd crone of a healer, even the brewess of the longhouse who would go on ad nauseam about her theories on how brewing worked.
What was unique was how little Bjorn cared about the taboo, the oddity of it. Askeladd had never met a Dane who forgave grudges as easily as water rolling off of the back. Bjorn had a tranquility to him that refrained from charging head-in to brawls and battles, and as such, Askeladd could trust that his second wouldn’t die trying to defend every small slight to his honor. He was brutal when needed— effectively so, as any in their old warband could’ve told, tolerating no slight to his rank and Askeladd’s authority as their leader— but his level-headedness was hard to come by, as usually people were either easily-used pushovers or violent brutes and not in the sweet middle.
Askeladd remembered once prodding Bjorn about his strange humility, his nonchalance at helping the older, arthritic women of the village with their winter weaving, or being curious about the brewing of ale and mead, or of willingly laboring over a cooking-fire and making poultices and medicines. Bjorn had just shrugged. Odin practiced seidr, and even Thor had swallowed his pride to get his hammer back, dressing up as a convincing bride. So what did it matter? He knew his worth. And he was stronger than any priggish bastard who thought he wouldn’t be able to defend himself just because he knew how to treat winter fever and helped out instead of lazing around and being a nuisance all winter.
Perhaps that had been partly why Askeladd had never been able to push him away, even when he realized Bjorn contained a certain softheartedness, a fatal gentleness to his nature that normally would have no place in a warband. It was this that nearly got him killed when he’d been disarmed by Canute…
Askeladd shook his head slightly, clearing his wandering thoughts from their winding paths. It eventually led to soured memories anyways, how cruel he’d been to the only man who remained loyal to him, the only one who gave a shit. Now wasn’t time for such musings, especially when Bjorn only grew concerned when he voiced them, and when he was still patiently waiting for him to return from his thoughts to the present.
“Well,” Askeladd said softly, swallowing his bite of food. “She’d be very proud of this, I'm sure of it.”
Bjorn’s eyes widened slightly at the praise, his lips curling into a small, charming smile. He leaned to the side, bumping their shoulders. He could almost see Bjorn’s lips forming the words ‘It’s nothing, really,’ but he paused and thought better of it, whispering a thank-you instead. Good. Askeladd didn’t want to explain to him how, as someone who grew up eating only thin gruel and burnt bread, meals like this were something to be proud of— the making of comfort with one’s own hands. And he’d been doing it for years now, unasked and underappreciated.
Eventually they both cleaned their bowls and placed them on the stool nearby which they used as a bedside table, and Askeladd gave Garmr a testy look as the mutt meekly approached the bowls and licked his chops at the thought of cleaning the oils from them, loping off to his straw bed in the corner at those narrowed blue eyes. Bjorn chuckled, leaning back against the wall, his body pleasantly warm and heavy with the seductive pull of an after-meal nap.
Idly they chatted about everything and nothing at all. Askeladd leaned in against him after he brought a blanket up over their shoulders, one arm free to continue sipping his ale. Around them the world was quiet and distant, an afterthought, their present concerned only with the immediacy of their bodies and the walls of their cottage. Contained in this small space, there was no room for worry of the wider world that they used to roam and bloody. For better or for worse, they had been spared death: their fate now was in the home that they built, in the growing fields and the community that had slowly accepted them.
Their conversation tapered off. Bjorn looked down at the warm body nestled against his side; Askeladd’s face blotchy and pink and his eyes heavy, his head tipped forward with the pull of a deep, dreamless sleep. He’d drank more than his wont, and the domestic vulnerability of it made Bjorn’s heart throb with a pleasing ache, one he didn’t want to heal from.
Askeladd had never let himself be so readily unguarded in the years they’d known each other— it was always something Bjorn had to coax out or to wait for winter for the lock on their door. Even then he’d temper his drinks and would remain cautious, almost paranoid about interruptions or the goings-on of the men they were in charge of, men who could intrude. But there was none of that anxiety here: just their cottage on the outskirts of a small Welsh village, a neighbor nearby they trusted, and a dog warming himself next to the fire— a more perfect guard than any man.
He can’t help himself, not with the burgeon of affection welling up to his cheeks from his heart: he wrapped an arm around the other man, bringing him even closer to him as if to absorb him. Bjorn wanted to feel Askeladd all around his skin, warm and breathing and alive and safe. This new and welcome reality, the glimpse of the man under the facades brought into focus from the awe he cultivated, from the cool distance he’d kept himself. And how endearing it was that his abstinence from heavy drink all those years made him such a lightweight even with just a few cups of dark malt, mellowed-out and tipsy.
This ease had been two decades in the making and Bjorn was going to bask in this light.
How mundane their day had been, like a warm wool cloak wrapping around the heart. The blue-green hue of the lake under the sheet of translucent ice, the pale of the winter sky like sweet cream, the snow crunching underfoot as they picked their way up the hills where they best remembered the path to be under the blanket of snow.
Askeladd had helped him cut a hole into the ice with his chisel and a borrowed saw, and had questioned him about his fishing gear as he secured his skates to his turnshoes. They’d both worked on the skates since the harvest— Askeladd shaping the bone into how he remembered the blades to be, and Bjorn working on the straps that secured them to feet without wobbling or breaking with movement. After a moment of indignant unsteadiness from the years without practice, the patina of time was polished off with muscle-memory and Askeladd's usual confidence.
He'd had been wearing new leg wraps and a woad tunic that brought out his eyes in the best of ways, his cloak removed as he skated. Bjorn had been unable to focus with the sound of him making loops around his fishing hole, his movement fluid and effortless as he kicked up to speed with a shift of his hips and a slide, as if he were the winds themselves given form, or that he was merely hovering over the ice. Enchanting. He’d held his arms behind his back just to make a more effortless glide, his blue eyes flicking up to meet Bjorn’s in each circuit and gleaming with that rare, but becoming more common, happiness. As if Askeladd could finally forget everything and just live in the time that he was in, the terror of the past and the tentative anxiety of their future irrelevant.
“Where’d you learn how to skate so well?” Bjorn suddenly blurted, letting his thoughts out into the companionable silence.
Askeladd stiffened against his side, his deep and even breathing catching, seemingly drawing back within himself. Bjorn hastily added:
“If you want!” to his thoughtless question, but Askeladd simply hooked his arm around Bjorn’s own and leaned back against him in his silent way of assuring him that all was right.
(Just as Askeladd had to learn how to share the memories he’d kept so long under his skin, tucked next to his bitter heart, Bjorn had to learn that it was good to ask, that he would no longer be dealt the cold shoulder for his innocent curiosity.)
“I taught myself,” Askeladd explains softly.
He shifted again in slight discomfort.
“Found a broken pair of old skates when I was little, and I refitted them with what scraps I could find, made a new blade. I could only skate on rare holidays when it was cold enough for the pond nearby to freeze and when I had a moment away from work. It was one of the few things I had to look forward to.”
A beat of quiet, the sound of the fire crackling.
“Mother liked to watch,” he added quietly, wistfully. “She would urge me to keep trying every time I fell…”
Bjorn let his words taper into silence. Most of all it was difficult for Askeladd to speak of his mother, and probably always would be. Time didn’t heal all wounds, and these were chronic aches, a scar that didn’t heal right or a bone improperly set. But Bjorn took this tidbit of memory as gently as he could in his hands, like he was shielding a kindled flame from a harsh wind that sought to blow it out with cruel gusts. And it helped, he knew, that he spoke of his own mother, that he understood the love.
“I can understand,” Bjorn adds after a moment. “She liked seeing you happy.”
Tense. For a moment Askeladd’s thoughts seem to stop churning behind his eyes and he swallowed around this simple revelation. He tipped his face up to meet Bjorn’s eyes, nodding once and then leaning back in. The quiet contact was all the words they needed, and Bjorn laid his cheek atop the other man’s head.
“I love watching you move,” he mumbled, recalling again the sway of Askeladd on the ice, the sound of the skates making thin furrows.
He had a way about him, lithe and quick. Just like in battle, how he moved a sword like it was an extension of himself, like it was weightless, made of light-turned-silver. Askeladd made anyone who watched believe that it was the most natural thing in the world to merge flesh with iron, and Bjorn had been struck with lightning the first time he’d witnessed Askeladd fight, awe drenching his boyhood idealism. He’d never seen a man with body and mind so well-synced, his wit as quick as his blade, tucking away brute strength for what could only be called a dance . It made sense that he’d be a natural at sports too.
“It’s not just a battle thing,” Bjorn clarifies. “You look incredible skating too.”
Askeladd smirked, and Bjorn could feel it against his arm. But his voice was softer, touched with less lechery than usual for a comment about his body. Something about his confession had brought out a gentleness.
“Do I?”
Bjorn smiled back down at him, easily betraying his fondness before fixing his stone-hewn face into a playful sternness:
“Don’t even pretend you don’t know it.”
“Hmm,” Askeladd considered coyly, his hand stroking at his beard.
(It helped, Bjorn found, for the other man to accept honest tenderness to mix in an easier way to accept such tenderness with teasing. It also helped that they had been drinking, and the day’s exercise and food made them both sleepy and pliant.)
“Perhaps I wanted payback,” Askeladd said slyly, “For how you cut into the ice with your tunic off, making a show of it.”
Bjorn tried hiding the smile that threatened his lips, but he’d never been good at such things, especially when his stomach fluttered at the admission that Askeladd had been looking. Bjorn knew Askeladd was a deceptively strong man— all lean muscle on small stature, seemingly less imposing. He used it to his advantage, for sure. But Bjorn also knew that Askeladd had quite the liking for the brute muscle-and-fat of his body, thick and obvious in its power. So it was frankly intoxicating to have the man look at him with such covert interest, even after all these years of becoming familiar with each other.
“Well, I couldn’t get my clothes wet, or I’d be miserable sitting out there,” he defended.
Askeladd hummed doubtfully, the sarcasm punctuated with a roll of his eyes.
“Hey!” Bjorn nudged him with his elbow. “I almost lost the fish watching you skate.”
And Askeladd gasped at the horror of it, but Bjorn continued before he could interrupt further—
“Then what would we have had for dinner?”
“Well then, next time I’ll just have to skate without yo—”
“Don’t you dare,” Bjorn cut in, his tone shifting dramatically to seriousness.
They both laugh quietly. Garmr, having been sleeping sprawled out on the floor, groaned dramatically in his sleep at their voices. The fire, still well-fueled, crackled softly and the wind hushed on the roof. The quiet wrapped around them both again, warm and dim.
So easy to go to sleep in such comfort. All sounds muted and all light gentle, the world far away. But, as usual, Bjorn eventually remembered what needed to be done, that he should probably get up and soak the dishes and clean up from dinner, but he soon thought better of it when Askeladd shifted against him, scooting up from his slouch and adjusting the corner of wool around his body. And Bjorn looked down at the man just in time to see the flicker of a wince shift over his face like an unwanted shadow, then a grimace when he realized Bjorn had seen his momentary weakness.
“Don’t give me that look,” Askeladd admonished. “It’s fine, I think I just slept on my shoulder funny last night.”
He waved Bjorn's concern off with his good hand, settling back against Bjorn even as Bjorn made to pull away.
“It’s not fine, ” Bjorn rebuked, turning to face him. “You should’ve told me earlier.”
Askeladd tried swiping his hands away as they tried pushing him to turn his back, but Bjorn couldn’t be reasoned with.
“Stop fussing, and take your tunic off.”
“Why, afraid it will get wet?” Askeladd quipped, sighing at his losing battle and obliging Bjorn. He was doomed.
“Not a very good excuse indoors, is it?” Bjorn snorts. “Now let me see.”
Askeladd tossed his tunic and linen undershirt at the end of the bed and a smirk crept onto his lips, crossing his arms over his bare chest.
“So it was an excuse to flex your muscles.”
Bjorn didn’t dignify the provocation with a response, just huffing. He pressed his fingers against the heat of Askeladd’s shoulder, tenderly smoothing along the firm muscle, the fire defining the topography of his body in light-and-shadow. Reverently Bjorn enjoyed the sculpted shapes, the scars littering the pale ivory of his skin, his calloused fingertips tracing the offending shoulder-blade until he rubbed over the spot that made Askeladd jump, a hiss barely-audible from his lips. It was as if Bjorn had hit an invisible bruise, and the muscle there was a tough knot.
He bit his tongue to keep from teasing, just shaking his head and pressing the heel of his palm into the knot, working on it like dough before Askeladd could feel the need to defend himself— as if Bjorn wasn’t always willing to help with any ache and pain. And as if to confirm the hurt he’d been hiding, Askeladd all-but moaned as Bjorn worked over the spot, biting back the sound fruitlessly.
All right, Bjorn couldn’t help it: he chuckled, a low sound caught in his throat.
Askeladd, feigning incense, was only able to let out:
“Smug bastard—” before Bjorn had kneaded into the spot again and made him melt.
“I didn’t say anything,” Bjorn teased, his wide grin audible.
Askeladd thankfully was left without words, and let him work on the muscle without protest and indeed, with encouragement. Large hands squeezed over his shoulders until his head rolled back with little sighs and moans that he didn’t bother holding back. His arms had uncrossed from his chest and he leaned back into Bjorn, letting him half-hold his weight.
It was a treat, to see him abandoned to this ease. So used to slipping into a mask, Bjorn loved when he didn’t overthink and just let be. Nothing pleased Bjorn more than when Askeladd let him take care of him without pride and the reflexive desire to appear invulnerable to the weariness of the world, or the toll fighting took on one’s body. So he took advantage of it, stooping down to kiss his shoulder, up to his nape and the back of his ear where the blond at his temples was beginning to silver.
His little slips and moans weren’t helping, and Bjorn felt the excitement of pampering this man fade into a buzz of blooming need just under his skin, making him feel warm as a bonfire as the feeling shifted to a fervor, sinking low and hot within him. Askeladd just had to know what he was doing to him just as Bjorn suspected his large hands working over his aching skin had an effect on Askeladd.
Bjorn let his fingers drag up his back and along his shoulders, following the movement with his lips, kissing along the slope to the curve of it into his arm, dropping his lips to press his nose into his shoulder blade, letting his teeth sink into the flesh and suck in a small bruise to the back, his arms snaking around his waist. The massage was forgotten now, just the human need for skin-on-skin and the feeling of a dearest close, heart-over-heart.
Askeladd, no longer content to be pliant, turned around in his embrace to meet Bjorn’s lips, his movements sleepy and warm and his tongue still tasting of ale and herbs. A pleasant fuzziness suffused them both, a heaviness that was turning into an aching that wouldn’t be ignored, swelling between their thighs in a throb. Such a feeling wouldn’t tolerate distance, and both of their wandering focused into something more urgent and bold.
Facing him completely now, Askeladd wrapped his arms around his neck and pulled Bjorn flush, dragging him across the threshold of teasing into fulfillment. His fingers wove into Bjorn’s mane, tugging at the scalp in a way that always spurred Bjorn into hardness. Bjorn tipped him back, pressing him into the bed and looming above him in another show of broad muscle, biting on his partner’s lip and squeezing his thigh with an enveloping hand, guiding the limb to hook around his hip like it was made to slot in there.
Dragging his nose and lips down along Askeladd’s jaw where his goatee ended, Bjorn licked and bit, leaving a trail of heat and pink down to his neck and collarbone, all the way to the shuddering expansion of his chest. He boldly laved over a nipple, working over it with a flick and flat of his tongue, caging the bud with his teeth and sucking on the treat, and fuck, he was still making those noises, moans and sharp sighs singing in the quiet of the room.
But Askeladd was also fumbling with the belt at Bjorn’s waist, something he only barely noticed as he focused his attention on the sweet skin in his mouth. He moved further down to better cant his head and Askeladd’s hand slipped from the leather.
“Bjorn,” he complained breathily, not without an edge of demand, voice hitching when Bjorn lightly scraped over a thoroughly teased nipple.
He pulled on Bjorn’s hair for emphasis, drawing from him a low rumble, and Bjorn pulled back reluctantly to undo his own belt. Askeladd shifted, spreading his legs on either side of Bjorn’s kneeling ones as he shucked off his tunic and undershirt, almost sitting his ass in his lap. Heat tingled under the surface of Bjorn’s skin at the sight, and at the obvious bulge in Askeladd’s pants, the heat in his blue eyes like water set to boil.
Once bare-chested, Bjorn immediately returned to his rightful place, the feel of Askeladd’s fingers weaving back into his hair all he wished for, his hips grinding up against him as he bent over and licked and sucked at the other nipple this time, teasing the bud incessantly and dragging his plaited beard over the sensitive skin. All-the-while, his large hands trail along the side of his body, feeling his heaving ribs and the muscles over them, the velvet warmth of his skin. Askeladd continued to pull at him greedily, holding him to his chest and spurring him on with gasps and sighs.
But before long his partner became more demanding. Bjorn felt like he was drunk on Askeladd: like he was addicted to him, as if he’d taken a small bite of his mushroom, just enough to submerge himself in the sublime visions of the gods while he remained aware of the animal of his body begging for his lover. The smell of sweating skin and the taste of him on his lips. The flesh and blood and breath— how the gods had made this man just his to hold.
Sliding up his skin and kissing Askeladd sloppily, Bjorn didn’t keep him waiting any more. He sealed their lips in a greedy pull of a kiss, more tongue pressing into mouth than lips or teeth, shoving his hand under the band of the other man’s pants and the tie of his braies, finding him hard and leaking into the linen. Askeladd groaned in gratification, Bjorn pumping him slowly, swallowing his languid noises as if to devour them whole.
Panting against his lips, Bjorn pulled back, watching from the part of his clothes how the other man thrust up into his fist, the movement of his abdominals mesmerizing, his flat stomach and the blond tufts at the base of his cock, his tip already a pretty pink.
Bjorn felt like he could stay like this, just watching Askeladd buck up into his hand, the wet of his head smearing down along his shaft with each jerky movement, his thighs flexing as he pushed up against the mattress. What it would look like to watch him unravel and reach his peak with his eyes squeezed tight to the bliss of it, his legs spread shamelessly, his toes pointing into the blankets and his mouth full around Bjorn’s name as he spent himself, thick ropes that clung to Bjorn’s hand and dripped and pooled into his own navel.
But Askeladd was pawing at Bjorn’s own tented pants through the haze of his own sleepy and well-fed lust, pulling at his biceps with a dull sting of his nails, trying to shove his hand down Bjorn’s pants. Keenly aware of his own length straining against its confines, Bjorn scooted closer, adjusting his legs to allow Askeladd to find him, his hand grasping onto him, cupping his heavy sack and then squeezing his thick root right up to the tip. He hissed with the overwhelming relief of it, trailing off into a soft gasp as Askeladd smoothed his leaking precum down along him, spreading it with the curved warmth of his palm.
Greedy and completely of one mind, they both jerked each other off, quickly and without much finesse. Intoxicated with the feel of velvet-hard skin and heat and the taste of each other on their lips, they struggled to balance getting as close as possible to each other while having enough room to touch. Bjorn shifted closer in the haze, laying more to the side to allow easier access, not wanting even in his mind-numbness to strain his lover’s wrist.
Small ahs, hums and pants leave their lips, and Askeladd still canted his hips to meet with Bjorn’s hand while his own tried to match the rhythm that brought them closer and closer, as if they were both working through the other— who led the pace and who followed?
Bjorn could feel the sweat beading at his temples, and his half-lidded eyes couldn’t tear themselves away from Askeladd’s flushed cheeks and hooded eyes when they were parted enough to pull in meager breath and then press back together. Their kisses were small, wet mwahs.
“Bjorn,” Askeladd rasped, his breath hot across Bjorn’s lips and cheek, back arching up into his hand.
“Fuck, Cariad, so close, can’t think—”
“Shh,” Bjorn hushed, his voice dipping low and rough in his throat, his nose pressed against Askeladd’s cheek and it was difficult to breathe but he couldn’t get enough, couldn’t feel, smell, taste, see, hear enough—
“Don’t need to, take care of you,” he mumbled, barely able to string together words. “’ve got you.”
And Askeladd, arching up again into his hand with a broken gasp and a shudder that worked through his entire body, spilled, a strangled shout. Bjorn followed right after, muffling his own groan into Askeladd’s neck and rocking his hips through the free-fall of his orgasm, Askeladd’s grip on his shaft loose and twitching before resuming from the haze of his own bliss to pump Bjorn exhaustedly, coaxing out a final spill into his fingers.
The room, close and dark and nothing else mattered but this— the smell of him, sex and sweat, the pulse beating in his neck.
Bjorn managed to fall off to the side as his body slackened, his limbs pleasantly overtaxed from holding himself up. Almost as soon as he lay supine, his chest rising-and-falling and his ears stuffed with wool, Askeladd slid into place like a lodestone, tangling their legs and resting his head on the thatch of hair over his chest. He was barely coherent enough to reach over and grab onto the rag they’d used to wipe their hands of their night-meal, summoning only enough energy to clean up their mess from their hands and bodies before tossing the rag onto the floor and tugging the blanket crookedly over their shoulders.
Heart still throbbing hard in his ears like a drum, his cheeks burning, Askeladd sighed, going limp after wrapping an arm around Bjorn, too satiated to do much else.
Sleep came quickly to them both, deep and dreamless and warm: a sea made from a thawed heart.
***