Vastervik: Chapter 7

The first boat came back full.

Casper stood at the harbour wall and watched Magnús Jónsson’s crew haul the nets hand over hand, the cod spilling onto the deck in a silver-grey heap that caught the morning light. The boat sat low in the water. The catch was heavy enough that the gunwale dipped when the men shifted to starboard, and Magnús’s boy, fourteen and built like a slightly smaller version of Guðmundur, had to brace himself against the mast to keep his feet.

Casper assessed the fish. He always counted. It was part of what people expected him to do, though no one had ever told him so directly. He stood at the wall in his linen tunic with the wind pulling at his hair, and the fishermen glanced up at him as they worked. Quick looks. The kind you gave a weather vane or a tide marker.

The catch was good. Better than good. Magnús raised a hand to him as the boat came alongside the jetty, palm flat, a gesture between a wave and a salute. Casper lifted his hand in return.

He walked back along the harbour front. The stone was cold and wet beneath his feet, gritty with sand where the tide had reached the upper steps overnight. Two women were mending nets outside the smokehouse, their fingers quick in the tarred rope, and they nodded to him as he passed. One of them touched the hem of his tunic. He slowed to let her, the way he always did, and her rough fingers brushed the linen at his hip and came away.

Casper climbed the hill toward Svartborg. The kale beds were dark and heavy with the night’s rain. The herb troughs sat against the garden wall, thyme and rosemary, the leaves beaded with water that hadn’t yet burned off. He stopped beside them, right where Toby had knelt.

He touched the thyme. Rubbed a sprig between his fingers and brought them to his nose, releasing the sharp scent of it into the air. It had been a week. Seven days since Toby’s mouth was on him, and nothing bad had happened.

Casper carried this fact around with him like a lucky talisman, reaching for it throughout the day to check its weight, its shape, whether it had changed. No boats had sunk. No engines had failed in open water. No storms had come screaming out of the northwest to dash the fleet against the Skalavik rocks. The cod were running thick in the offshore channels. Magnús Jónsson’s nets were full. Old Bjarni, who kept the weather records in a leather-bound book that went back to his grandfather’s grandfather, told Casper over breakfast that the barometric pressure had been stable for six straight days, which was unusual for June and which Bjarni considered a personal gift from the sea god.

The livestock was fine. The sheep grazed the hill pastures in their heavy wool, the lambs were fat and steady on their legs. The Ri’s falconer reported that the peregrine had taken two rabbits in a single morning, which meant the rabbit population was healthy, and the grass was good, which meant the soil was holding. Agna’s kitchen garden was producing kale at a rate that suggested the earth itself was showing off.

There was no illness. No blight. No school of dead fish floating belly-up in the harbour. No omen written in the flight pattern of the gulls, though Casper watched for it each morning from his window, tracking the birds across the grey sky with the anxious attention of someone reading a letter they expected to contain bad news.

The bad luck never came.

He weeded the herb garden on Wednesday. He blessed a new fishing line for Þóra Magnúsdóttir on Thursday, threading dried heather through the hooks while the girl watched with solemn eyes. On Friday he swam in the south cove, the water cold enough to make his lungs seize on entry, and Fenrir paced the sand and barked at the waves until Casper came back in. The sea was the same. It had the same pull, the same salt taste, the same dark water closing over his head when he dove. If the Sea God was angry, the sea itself hadn’t got the message.

Leif watched him. That hadn’t changed. Leif’s grey eyes followed Casper across the courtyard, through the hall at mealtimes, down the harbour steps in the morning. He hadn’t checked again. Hadn’t pushed Casper onto the bed, and parted the folds of him to inspect what lay inside. But the watching carried its own weight. Casper could feel it on the back of his neck when he turned away.

On Sunday, old Rúna came up from the village with a basket of dulse she’d gathered from the tidal pools. She knelt at Casper’s feet in the courtyard and pressed her forehead to his instep, the skin of her face dry and papery against his toes. She smelled of seaweed and woodsmoke. She told him, in the rapid Vasterviksk that the oldest villagers spoke, that her grandson’s boat had come through a squall off the northern headland without taking water, and she thanked the Consort for his protection.

Casper put his hand on her head and said the words. The old words, the ones he’d been taught before he could read, the blessing that sat in his mouth as naturally as his own tongue. Rúna got to her feet, left the dulse, patted his cheek with a hand that had been hauling kelp for seventy years, and walked back down the hill.

He ate the dulse with his evening meal. After dinner, Casper walked the corridor barefoot. The stone was cold and familiar, worn smooth in the centre where seven centuries of feet had passed. He knew the distances without counting. Fourteen steps to the landing. Eight to the turn. Six more to the guest quarters where the Ri housed visitors of importance in the rooms with the better mattresses and windows that actually closed.

The door to Toby’s room was shut. A thin band of light showed beneath it. Casper stood in front of it for long enough that his feet grew numb on the cold stone. He could hear nothing from inside. But he could smell the alpha, faintly, through the gap where the old timber had warped away from the frame. He caught the scent of warm skin. Something expensive and woody that clung to Toby’s clothes.

He knocked, laying two knuckles against the timber. The sound was louder than he’d intended.

The light shifted. There was the sound of footsteps on the boards, and the door opened.

Toby stood in the doorway in a white T-shirt and dark trousers, his feet bare on the floorboards. His hair was damp, pushed back from his forehead. The woody scent was stronger this close, layered over clean skin and the faint mineral note of Svartborg’s well water. His hand tightened on the door frame.

Casper stepped forward and kissed him.

The angle was wrong. Casper’s mouth landed on the corner of Toby’s, half on the lower lip, half on the stubbled skin beside it. He corrected. Pressed his lips flush to the alpha’s and held them there, his hands at his sides, his heart going so hard that his pulse filled his ears. Toby’s mouth was warm, and the softness of it against Casper’s chapped lips sent a shiver through his shoulders.

Toby didn’t move for a moment. Then his hand came off the door frame and settled on the back of Casper’s neck. The kiss deepened.

The alpha pulled him inside and closed the door. The room was warmer than Casper’s, the window fitted properly, a candle burning on the table beside the bed. Toby’s travelling bag sat open on the chair, shirts folded in a neat stack, a pair of leather shoes placed side by side beneath it. The bed was turned down. The sheets were blindingly white.

Casper pulled back from the kiss. His breathing was unsteady. Toby’s hand stayed on his neck, the thumb resting behind his ear, and the weight of it there was enough to make Casper want to close his eyes and press into it. He reached down, gathered the hem of his tunic, and pulled it over his head.

The air hit his bare skin. He was naked beneath the linen, as he always was, and the cold raised goosebumps along his body. He let the tunic drop to the floor. Toby’s hand had fallen away when he moved. The alpha took a step back. Casper felt his gaze move over his body like the passage of warm water.

Casper sat on the edge of the bed. The sheets were cool against the backs of his thighs. He looked at Toby, and then he looked at the space between them, and then he did the thing he had come here to do.

He lay back. He drew his knees up, let them fall open, and reached down with both hands. His fingers found the soft folds of his slit and parted them, spreading the lips the way Leif spread them, the way the Ri’s physician spread them at the annual inspection, holding himself open with his thumbs hooked into the delicate tissue. The interior skin was pink, slick-wet already, the membrane visible just inside where the canal narrowed. He could feel the cool air reach the places that usually stayed hidden.

He held himself open and looked at Toby.

The alpha hadn’t moved. His jaw was set, a muscle working beneath his dark stubble. His pupils had blown wide, the brown of his iris nearly gone, as his gaze fixed itself between Casper’s legs. The front of his trousers had changed shape. The line of his cock was visible through the dark fabric, thickening, pressing against the seam.

“This is what they check,” Casper said. His voice was steady. His hands were not. “Every time. They hold me open and they look. To make sure I’m whole.”

Toby’s chest moved beneath the white T-shirt, the cotton pulling taut across his shoulders.

“I’m showing you because I want to.” Casper’s thumbs trembled against the folds. The air on the exposed tissue was making the slick flow faster, a slow trickle of warmth that ran down to pool on the white sheet beneath him. “Not because you asked. Not because someone told me to.”

Toby came to the bed. He knelt on the floor beside it, his knees on the boards the way they’d been on the flagstones in the garden, and his hand covered Casper’s. Not pulling his fingers away. Not replacing them. Just resting there, his palm over the backs of Casper’s knuckles, warm and steady.

“Let go,” Toby said quietly.

Casper released the folds. Toby’s hand stayed. His fingers slid down from Casper’s knuckles to the mound, the pad of his middle finger settling over the peak where the tissue crested. He pressed. A slow, firm circle, his finger working the nub through the thin covering of skin.

Casper’s head dropped back against the mattress. The sensation started where Toby’s finger touched and spread outward in expanding rings. His hips twitched. His breath came out in a rush that fogged in the cold air above the candle flame.

Toby worked him with patient, deliberate strokes. His thumb drew along the outer fold while his middle finger circled the mound, varying the pressure, reading the responses in the shifts of Casper’s hips and the catching of his breathing. When he pressed harder, Casper’s thighs tensed. When he eased off and traced the perimeter with the lightest touch, Casper’s back arched, the muscles in his stomach contracting.

Casper watched. He propped himself on his elbows and looked down the length of his own body to where the alpha’s hand moved between his legs. Toby’s broad fingers, tanned against the pale skin of the mound, the dark hair on his forearm, the shift of the tendons in his wrist as he adjusted the angle. The slick coated his fingers, glistening in the candlelight.

Casper reached down and placed his hand over Toby’s. His fingers slotted between the alpha’s, the slick making them slide, and he pressed Toby’s finger harder against the nub. The added pressure sent a bright jolt through his pelvis, and his hips bucked up against their joined hands.

Toby turned his hand beneath Casper’s and laced their fingers together. He lifted them, both their hands slick and warm, and placed Casper’s hand back on his own mound.

“Show me how you do it.” His voice was low, rough at the edges. “Show me what you like.”

Casper’s fingers were wet against himself. He found the nub. He pressed it with his middle finger, circling the way he’d learned to in the dark of his own room, the pressure firm at the top of the stroke and easing at the bottom. It was different with Toby watching. The heat of the alpha’s gaze on his skin, a second kind of warmth layered over the first, and the combination made his cock stiffen against his belly, the small pink shaft filling and lifting from where it lay against the crease of his thigh.

Toby’s hand moved to the omega’s slit. His fingers traced the sealed lips, following the seam from front to back with a touch so light it was barely contact. The outer folds were swollen, hot, slippery with slick. Toby parted the lips with two fingers, just the outer edge, not pressing inside, and stroked the inner tissue with his thumb. The membrane was delicate there, plush with blood, and the friction of his thumb against it drew a moan from Casper.

Casper’s hand moved faster. The circles tightened, his fingertip pressing harder on the nub, the pleasure building in pulses that matched the pace of his breathing. Toby’s fingers continued their slow exploration of his outer folds, parting them, stroking them together, spreading the lips and running his thumb along the crease where they met the mound. The combination of his own hand on the nub and Toby’s fingers on his slit filled Casper’s pelvis with a heat that had weight, pressing down through his hips and tightening the muscles in his thighs.

His orgasm hit without warning. One moment the heat was building, the pressure accumulating in steady increments, and the next it broke. His slit clenched, the inner walls contracting in rapid spasms around nothing, and slick flooded over Toby’s fingers in a warm rush that soaked the sheet beneath him. Casper’s hand stuttered on the mound, the rhythm collapsing, his hips jerking in sharp, uncontrolled thrusts against his palm. The sound he made was a gasp that broke into a moan.

Toby stroked him through it. His fingers stayed on the outer folds, light now, gentling, easing him through the aftershocks until Casper’s hips sank back to the mattress and his breathing went from ragged to just unsteady.

Casper lay still. His hand rested on his mound, his fingers loose, the slick cooling between them. His chest rose and fell. The candle flame made shadows on the ceiling that moved like water.

Toby stood. His hands went to the front of his trousers, unfastening the button, drawing down the zip. He pushed the fabric down his hips and his cock sprang free, thick and flushed dark, the head wet where the foreskin had peeled back. Toby wrapped his hand around the shaft and stroked once, spreading the moisture at the tip.

He came back to the bed. Casper’s legs were still open, the slit glistening, the mound flushed a deep pink from his own hand and Toby’s. Toby knelt between his thighs. He took his cock in hand, leaned forward, and dragged the head through the mess of slick that had pooled in the crease where Casper’s thigh met his groin.

The contact of the hot, blunt tip of Toby’s cock against the wet skin of Casper’s inner thigh made both of them exhale. Toby dragged the head higher, along the outer fold of the slit, coating his shaft in slick. The foreskin slid back fully with the friction, and the exposed head left a glistening trail against the swollen tissue. He drew his length down the full seam of the slit, root to tip, the underside of his cock riding the slippery channel between the closed inner lips. Casper could feel every ridge, every vein, the thick pulse of blood beneath the taut skin. The sensation was foreign and overwhelming, the heat of someone else’s body pressed flush against his most sensitive parts.

Toby dragged his cock back up, slower this time, pressing the shaft flat against the omega’s mound. Casper’s hips rolled up to meet the pressure, and the soft nub ground against the underside of Toby’s cock, the friction sending a pulse of heat through his pelvis that made his toes curl against the sheets.

“Turn over,” Toby said. His voice had gone hoarse.

Casper turned onto his stomach. The sheets were damp beneath his hips, warm where his body had been, cold beyond. Toby’s hand settled in the small of his back, pressing him gently into the mattress.

“I’m not going inside you.” Toby’s mouth was close to his ear, the words low, his breath warm against the side of Casper’s neck. “Nowhere you don’t want me. All right?”

Casper nodded into the pillow.

“Close your legs. Tight.”

Casper brought his thighs together. The slick between them made the skin slide, the inner surfaces glossy with it, and when Toby pushed his cock between them from behind, the thickness of his shaft spread Casper’s thighs apart by a fraction before the muscle held. Toby’s cock settled into the tight channel between his legs, the underside riding the slippery seam of his slit, the head emerging between his closed thighs to press against the back of his mound.

Toby thrust. A slow, controlled stroke, the full length of his cock sliding between Casper’s thighs, the friction generating a slick, wet sound in the quiet room. Casper felt every inch of the movement. The thick ridge of the head dragging along the sealed lips of his slit. The heat of the shaft pressed against the tender tissue behind his cock. The alpha’s hips meeting the backs of his thighs, the wiry hair at the base of Toby’s cock rough against his slick skin. On the forward stroke, Toby’s balls pressed against his arse, heavy and warm, and the contact of his length against the oversensitive nub of his mound sent a bright spark of pleasure through Casper that made his fingers grip the pillow.

Toby found a rhythm. Deep, slow thrusts, the pace unhurried, each stroke long enough that Casper felt the head push through to the other side of his closed thighs before the alpha’s hips drew back. The slick eased the passage, obscene in its quantity, soaking the sheets beneath them, making the space between Casper’s legs a warm, tight channel that gripped Toby’s cock each time his thighs squeezed tighter.

Casper pressed back into the thrusts. His hips tilted, lifting off the mattress, angling his slit better against the underside of the shaft. The sensation was diffuse and constant, a sliding pressure across the whole surface of his sex, and it built differently from the sharp, focused sensation of fingers directly on his mound. This was a broader sensation. Slower. A heat that spread from the slit, up through his belly, and into his chest until his whole body felt like a single nerve ending being stroked.

Toby’s breathing changed. The strokes shortened, quickened, his hips snapping against the backs of Casper’s thighs with a force that pushed the omega into the mattress. His hand left Casper’s back and gripped his hip instead, the fingers digging into the bone, holding him in place. Casper felt the cock swell between his thighs, the shaft thickening, the head growing rigid, and then Toby’s hips stuttered and the alpha came with a low, guttural sound pressed into the back of Casper’s neck. The warmth of his release spread between Casper’s thighs, thick and copious, mixing with the slick, running in rivulets down the inside of his legs and onto the already-ruined sheet.

Toby’s weight settled over him. Not crushing, but present, the alpha’s chest against his back, his heartbeat hammering through the thin cotton of the T-shirt. Toby’s cock softened slowly between his thighs, the last pulses of warmth ebbing, and his mouth pressed a series of slow, open kisses to the curve of Casper’s neck where the muscle met the shoulder.

Casper lay beneath him and breathed. The weight of the alpha against him felt good. The warmth of him was good. The slick mess between his legs was cooling, and the sheet beneath his hips was unsalvageable, but he didn’t care about either of those things.

Toby rolled to the side and pulled Casper with him. The alpha’s arms closed around his chest from behind, gathering him in, tucking Casper’s back against his front. The sheets tangled around their legs. Toby’s softening cock rested against the back of Casper’s thigh, damp and warm.

Casper turned in the circle of his arms. He reached down between them. His fingers found the alpha’s cock, soft now, the skin silky and loose, the head sticky with the mix of come and slick. He held it in his palm. The weight of it, even soft, was substantial. He ran his thumb along the underside, feeling the ridge of the vein, the smooth stretch of the foreskin, the tacky residue at the tip.

“He is tired,” Casper said.

Toby made a sound against the top of his head that might have been a laugh.

Casper gave the shaft a gentle squeeze. The flesh was spongy and pliant, entirely unthreatening in this state. He cradled the head in his palm and drew his thumb across the slit at the tip, smearing the last bead of moisture. “He’s had a big day.”

“Has he?”

Casper lifted the cock in his palm, held it with a ceremonial gravity that required both hands, and bowed his head over it.

“Blessings of the sea upon you,” he said, in Vasterviksk, in the exact cadence he used at the harbour when the boats came in. “May you always rise to the tide and return safely to port.”

Toby’s chest shook against him. The laugh came out low, pressed into Casper’s hair, his arms tightening around him.

“That’s blasphemy,” Toby said. “By your own theology.”

“Then the Sea God will have to take it up with me directly.” Casper tucked the cock back against Toby’s thigh, gave it a pat, and settled his head against the alpha’s chest. The heartbeat beneath his ear had slowed. The candle on the table was guttering, the flame dipping into the pool of wax, throwing long shadows that stretched and contracted across the ceiling.

Casper closed his eyes. Toby’s hand moved in slow strokes along his spine, his fingertips tracing the ridges of vertebrae from the nape of his neck to the small of his back and up again. The touch was idle. Possessive. The way someone stroked a thing they intended to keep.

He pressed his face into the hollow of Toby’s throat and breathed in. The expensive woody scent was gone, burned off or sweated out, and what remained was just the alpha. Warm skin, salt, the faintly metallic edge of exertion. Underneath it, something that Casper’s hindbrain had been cataloguing since the harbour ceremony, filing away in the place where important information went. The scent of the person his body had chosen before his mind had been given any say in the matter.

The candle went out. The room settled into darkness, and the only sound was the sea against the rocks below the castle, steady and unchanged, the same sound it had made every night of Casper’s life.

He didn’t go back to his own room.