"When you're not tired and wounded?" Griffith asked, aware of how narrow his victory had been the day he'd claimed Guts. And yet he remained absolutely certain that he would triumph again, if he ever really needed to. Guts would always be his. Griffith would not allow anything else.
He squirmed comfortably beneath Guts, enjoying how Guts felt above him, and nuzzled at the side of Guts' head, pressing a few possessive kisses against his short hair. "Why would I ever agree to that?"
So they are agreed, which is to say that Griffith has decided what he wants and the world will simply have to bend. They will resolve his curse. He will keep Guts. He will keep his castle. There will be no more about this nonsense about roads and starvation.
"You are mine," Griffith murmurs, soft with affection. He curls his arms possessively around Guts, winding around him like a creeper vine.
They linger like that for a moment, Griffith a known warmth beneath him, while his joints protest the strain of holding himself courteously above his captive. In the end, he rolls over, landing with a tired creak from the bed below, and settling beside Griffith. They'll sleep poorly again, he can tell without the need for asking. Griffith's — agitated, and Guts struggles will take many an hour to ruminate over Griffith's revelations.
They might as well put this time to decent use.
"Have a word with Casca." She won't spare one for Guts, not when do much of their bond was forged on thoughtless abrasions and last-minute truths. "She knows something's happening."
Griffith is hardly the man who needs lessoning on what secrets Guts' mouth must mean. They've straddled this line before, halfway between tight-lipped silence and screaming from atop the barricades that whatever the hell they've got to share, spoils or bruises, is doled out carefully between them. They don't owe answers they never had to give.
But Casca knows now. Guts has never been the man with the strength to deny her. "Just... work your magic."
"I will," Griffith assures him, easily. As if it were his idea. As if he'd meant to do so all along.
A smile, a reassuring touch, and Casca would settle. He'd take the time to speak to her alone, coaxing a laugh from her, sharing a few minutes of victory over their new castle. Then the casual off-hand of his troubles, presented in a pair with Griffith's new theory, that it's linked somehow to them. Guts' touch made it lift. Griffith wants to know if Casca's will do the same. He wants her by his side more. She'll like that. It'll stoke her eagerness to move mountains for him.
All this takes mere moments in Griffith's mind. He curls beside Guts as he thinks, watching him and checking the shadows behind him to make sure that they stay shadows.
In the end, sleep compels him, a bead string of moments, blinking awake then submerging. Beside him, Griffith is a silent sun, warmth crackling but subdued. Fueling Guts alive.
He wakes with a sudden gasp, less nightmarish than elusively chilling, the feeling of stares and touches in the night. Not Griffith, for all their limbs chase each other to borrow any residual heat some days.
Not the band, who've learned in days that precede Guts to never interrupt Griffith's sleep, or enter his bed chamber unbidden — for fear of what company they might find there, or what mood might have seized their leader in the night,.
So, then. His eyes open slowly, despite the urgency that burns the back of his lids. He licks his lips. "You ever feel watched here?"
He knows without checking that Griffith's awake and prone. He always is, fright and fight equally compelling him.
Griffith drifts in and out of sleep. His nerves are soothed by the weight and warmth of Guts pressing into the mattress beside him, and it's a yearned-for comfort after the past nights of Guts in the chair or upon the cot, the careful and agonizing distance between them.
But Griffith's sleep is rarely easy, and his thoughts wake him, revisiting the points Guts brought up but to no satisfactory conclusion. He sleeps again, dreams, wakes again, considers.
Guts stands beside him in a meadow, sun on his shoulders and a grin on his lips, boyish, a different Guts who knew less pain or who has somehow healed, a dream Guts who basks in the freedom of the road. "You ever feel watched here?" the sunlit Guts asks.
Griffith blinks, and he's back in his castle, laying on his bed, and the warmth isn't sunlight after all, only Guts. He looks as though he's expecting some response, so Griffith responds to the dream Gut's question.
"I always feel watched." He has, ever since he received the Behelit. Part of his destiny, he thinks. Watched by the gods, or by the Behelit itself, or by the creatures that lately he has seen in every shadow.
Leaning over, he takes a light kiss from Guts' lips, then sits up to scan the room. Nothing. A lingering warmth like sunlight. "What do you see?"
"Nothing," and the truth of it stings, a flaw in the air-tight wall of their defences. Many nights of watch, and still this slip of a threat prevailed against them. Guts can't name it or give the measure of its reach, but it seeps into the plane of his awareness, raises the hairs on his body, keeps him tethered to an edge.
Enemy and unseen mean arrows, on most counts. Spies, on lesser days. Assassins, on those rare occasions when Griffith's slights have amounted to more than crippling inconvenience, and he's tarnished noble pride, along with treasuries. They don't add up prettily and compact to haunting, but here they are, desolate before the quiet understanding that whatever's lodged in the confines of the master's rooms has a hold of the fortress it's not compelled to surrender.
Griffith kisses him, a mother blessing her child, or a woman trying the lips of her first lover: forcibly effeminate, but thoughtless — a fleeting fancy, nothing to build on or grasp whole. Guts kisses back meaner, teeth and a hard push, something to wake the feeling inside this man, who can't be troubled to take this damn well seriously.
Griffith rumbles at that rough kiss, always interested in a challenge, and he rolls over onto Guts, straddling him, ready to wrestle or kiss or both. His eyes flick closed, once, twice, irritated to be interrupted from this interest by practicalities and questions. But it's Guts, and he'll do nearly anything for Guts.
So he looks again, hands resting on Guts' chest and thighs tight on either side of Guts' hips as he studies the room. He doesn't even feel it, now. He's too distracted by Guts. Blindness or safety, perhaps both, but while they're close enough to touch Griffith feels as though nothing can hurt him. Only sunlight, never shadows.
"Nothing," he echoes, dropping his head in a flash of white hair and kissing savagely at the front of Guts' throat, then the side, nipping roughly at the skin just below his jaw. That sharp, challenging kiss has got his attention, and now he wants more than anything to prod at Guts until he gets more of it.
He hisses under the renewed attention, slow to remedy it with a gentle tug, first at Griffith's sleeves, wrinkling under Guts' hands, then at his shoulders. His grip turns steely, catching now and holding, half lifting and half nudging back Griffith like an anchor that should be deposited to serve its proper use — a possession Guts can shift and place as he pleases.
Griffith's weight serves him, a faint and negligible complication that Guts won't pretend to be obstructed by past the initial effort of a laughing half breath.
"Nothing means you don't need me here now," he warns with a slight show of teeth, no where as menacing as he might have been those precious few moonrises ago, when Griffith had yet to glimpse new ways to stab at his softness.
Nothing, so he pushes Griffith back, just strong enough to signal there are conversations that precede lust, and they're speaking those words now. "Talk."
Griffith makes a feral little rumble in his chest, irritated at being held at arms length. He wants, and does not like being denied the things he wants, especially not when it was Guts' kiss that got him thinking that there might be opportunity for more.
Guts' control over him is perhaps more than either of them consciously realizes, because Griffith lets himself be subdued, and surrenders the information Guts demands.
"Nothing means I should never again let you leave my side," Griffith argues. "After that last night we were close, you spent several days at a distance, always just out of reach, sleeping in that chair and then your damn cot. We didn't touch for days, and I got worse. You touched me, and it lifted. It's stayed lifted, and you've stayed close. I don't know if it's touch or proximity. I don't know if it will work the same with Casca. I intend to find out. I don't know if it's an unrelated coincidence, or if it's something about you unrelated to touch."
It's all just a theory at this point, but Griffith spills it out for him as demanded, laying out the key points. He's thought it out in far more detail and has calculated possibilities and hypotheses--would a lock of hair be enough? Is it skin contact or can there be clothes or armor between them? If skin, why? If not, then is it a proximity of hearts or heads? Is it because of his deal?--but he doesn't expect that Guts wants to hear that level of hypothetical speculation.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
He squirmed comfortably beneath Guts, enjoying how Guts felt above him, and nuzzled at the side of Guts' head, pressing a few possessive kisses against his short hair. "Why would I ever agree to that?"
So they are agreed, which is to say that Griffith has decided what he wants and the world will simply have to bend. They will resolve his curse. He will keep Guts. He will keep his castle. There will be no more about this nonsense about roads and starvation.
"You are mine," Griffith murmurs, soft with affection. He curls his arms possessively around Guts, winding around him like a creeper vine.
no subject
They might as well put this time to decent use.
"Have a word with Casca." She won't spare one for Guts, not when do much of their bond was forged on thoughtless abrasions and last-minute truths. "She knows something's happening."
Griffith is hardly the man who needs lessoning on what secrets Guts' mouth must mean. They've straddled this line before, halfway between tight-lipped silence and screaming from atop the barricades that whatever the hell they've got to share, spoils or bruises, is doled out carefully between them. They don't owe answers they never had to give.
But Casca knows now. Guts has never been the man with the strength to deny her. "Just... work your magic."
no subject
A smile, a reassuring touch, and Casca would settle. He'd take the time to speak to her alone, coaxing a laugh from her, sharing a few minutes of victory over their new castle. Then the casual off-hand of his troubles, presented in a pair with Griffith's new theory, that it's linked somehow to them. Guts' touch made it lift. Griffith wants to know if Casca's will do the same. He wants her by his side more. She'll like that. It'll stoke her eagerness to move mountains for him.
All this takes mere moments in Griffith's mind. He curls beside Guts as he thinks, watching him and checking the shadows behind him to make sure that they stay shadows.
no subject
He wakes with a sudden gasp, less nightmarish than elusively chilling, the feeling of stares and touches in the night. Not Griffith, for all their limbs chase each other to borrow any residual heat some days.
Not the band, who've learned in days that precede Guts to never interrupt Griffith's sleep, or enter his bed chamber unbidden — for fear of what company they might find there, or what mood might have seized their leader in the night,.
So, then. His eyes open slowly, despite the urgency that burns the back of his lids. He licks his lips. "You ever feel watched here?"
He knows without checking that Griffith's awake and prone. He always is, fright and fight equally compelling him.
no subject
But Griffith's sleep is rarely easy, and his thoughts wake him, revisiting the points Guts brought up but to no satisfactory conclusion. He sleeps again, dreams, wakes again, considers.
Guts stands beside him in a meadow, sun on his shoulders and a grin on his lips, boyish, a different Guts who knew less pain or who has somehow healed, a dream Guts who basks in the freedom of the road. "You ever feel watched here?" the sunlit Guts asks.
Griffith blinks, and he's back in his castle, laying on his bed, and the warmth isn't sunlight after all, only Guts. He looks as though he's expecting some response, so Griffith responds to the dream Gut's question.
"I always feel watched." He has, ever since he received the Behelit. Part of his destiny, he thinks. Watched by the gods, or by the Behelit itself, or by the creatures that lately he has seen in every shadow.
Leaning over, he takes a light kiss from Guts' lips, then sits up to scan the room. Nothing. A lingering warmth like sunlight. "What do you see?"
no subject
Enemy and unseen mean arrows, on most counts. Spies, on lesser days. Assassins, on those rare occasions when Griffith's slights have amounted to more than crippling inconvenience, and he's tarnished noble pride, along with treasuries. They don't add up prettily and compact to haunting, but here they are, desolate before the quiet understanding that whatever's lodged in the confines of the master's rooms has a hold of the fortress it's not compelled to surrender.
Griffith kisses him, a mother blessing her child, or a woman trying the lips of her first lover: forcibly effeminate, but thoughtless — a fleeting fancy, nothing to build on or grasp whole. Guts kisses back meaner, teeth and a hard push, something to wake the feeling inside this man, who can't be troubled to take this damn well seriously.
"What does it look like, what you see?"
no subject
So he looks again, hands resting on Guts' chest and thighs tight on either side of Guts' hips as he studies the room. He doesn't even feel it, now. He's too distracted by Guts. Blindness or safety, perhaps both, but while they're close enough to touch Griffith feels as though nothing can hurt him. Only sunlight, never shadows.
"Nothing," he echoes, dropping his head in a flash of white hair and kissing savagely at the front of Guts' throat, then the side, nipping roughly at the skin just below his jaw. That sharp, challenging kiss has got his attention, and now he wants more than anything to prod at Guts until he gets more of it.
no subject
Griffith's weight serves him, a faint and negligible complication that Guts won't pretend to be obstructed by past the initial effort of a laughing half breath.
"Nothing means you don't need me here now," he warns with a slight show of teeth, no where as menacing as he might have been those precious few moonrises ago, when Griffith had yet to glimpse new ways to stab at his softness.
Nothing, so he pushes Griffith back, just strong enough to signal there are conversations that precede lust, and they're speaking those words now. "Talk."
no subject
Guts' control over him is perhaps more than either of them consciously realizes, because Griffith lets himself be subdued, and surrenders the information Guts demands.
"Nothing means I should never again let you leave my side," Griffith argues. "After that last night we were close, you spent several days at a distance, always just out of reach, sleeping in that chair and then your damn cot. We didn't touch for days, and I got worse. You touched me, and it lifted. It's stayed lifted, and you've stayed close. I don't know if it's touch or proximity. I don't know if it will work the same with Casca. I intend to find out. I don't know if it's an unrelated coincidence, or if it's something about you unrelated to touch."
It's all just a theory at this point, but Griffith spills it out for him as demanded, laying out the key points. He's thought it out in far more detail and has calculated possibilities and hypotheses--would a lock of hair be enough? Is it skin contact or can there be clothes or armor between them? If skin, why? If not, then is it a proximity of hearts or heads? Is it because of his deal?--but he doesn't expect that Guts wants to hear that level of hypothetical speculation.