Archive of Our Own ^beta

Snow crunched beneath the soles of angrily stomping boots.

They marched in continuous circles, footprints following and layering atop one another with every completed motion. 

That damned, balding swine.

Thorfinn's hands found purchase on his daggers, grip tightening until his knuckles turned bone white and the engraved designs of the handles had woven their markings deeply into the flesh of his palms. 

The thought of Askeladd at the moment--and, quite frankly, any other point in time--made his stomach churn with disgust, his hands twitch toward his blades, and his body fill with unrelenting rage. 

..Then again. There was *that.*

Thorfinn didn’t know when it started, but as of recently, there was this strange, foreign feeling that left goosebumps on the pale surface of his skin whenever his mind drifted to Askeladd.

At first, Thorfinn rejected- no, dismissed such emotions as something synonymous with agitation or hate.

But as the lines between a duel and an excuse for starved intimacy began to blur, he wasn’t sure what to believe—

—No!

No no no! He did know what to believe: that Askeladd was the man who killed his father in cold blood, and that this feeling was a newfound layer of dedicated vengeance.

Yes.. yes, that sounds about fucking right.

After all, especially after this, what else could it possibly be? 

Thorfinn looked down at his body with a scowl.

Two small mounds on his chest, slimmed-down limbs, and an irritating lack of a solid presence between his legs were replaced with something rather flat.

Thorfinn had practically died on the spot once he took an intrigued glimpse, hyperventilating and begging whatever gods, be it Olad or some other entity, that resided within Valhalla to grace him with the erasure of such a vulgar sight.

Fuck. Just thinking about it made his legs stop their circling, instead settling for rubbing his thighs together and ignoring the heat that began pooling between them.

(As much as he tried not to let it affect him, poor Thorfinn was still a teenage boy.)

He should've never taken part in this assignment. He heard the word "duel" escape from the bastard's lips and jumped at the opportunity like a poorly-leashed dog, frothing at the mouth once the offer was no longer a provocative tease, but now a fulfilling promise.. 

A promise that wouldn't come without trial, of course.

Trying not to cause himself another migraine (Thorfinn’s certainly had his fair share since the beginning of this whole mess), he sat down in the snow and stared at his rippled reflection in the riverbank beside him, examining every nook and cranny.

Both his gaze and eyes remained the same--dark, vengeful. Filled to the brim with hatred. Though his eyelashes, such annoyingly delicate frivolous things, had become long and fluttering like Canute's.

Thorfinn brushed a hand through his hair, feeling more of it than usual. He hated its uncanny, borderline unfamiliar silk sensation.

The only sound Thorfinn could register was the grinding of his teeth, how each tooth slides against the other so hard he could count the grooves and dips with every movement.

That, and the pair of footsteps behind him, which he didn’t really care about until—

!!

Footsteps behind him! Fuck!

Unsheathing his twin blades, Thorfinn launched himself from the ground and brashly hoisted himself up against a tree.

Cold wood chips snipped softly against the weight of his back.

And Thorfinn could’ve sworn that he saw a sliver of a shadow align close behind a dead trunk.