Hammer & Air

by Amy Lane

  That night I simply lay on the chesterfield, and Hammer rubbed my back as the thick cloth robe slid off my shoulders. His hands were hard, but he knew muscles and their aches, had probably endured many when he first started smithing, not that I would have known. I mentioned this to him, and I heard the shrug in his voice, even if his hands still worked patient and tender on my shoulders.

  “You learn. You learn what feels good, what don’t. I asked the smith, he’d rub my aches. I learned to tend ’em myself.”

  I growled and he tried to chuckle, but I thought it sounded forced.

  “It’s not funny,” I mumbled. “How did you bear it, Hammer? You’re nobody’s boy.”

  “I’m yours,” he said mildly, and I moved my neck too fast and gasped at the twinge.

  “You are by choice. Yours and mine. I don’t know how you let yourself be...” I floundered for the word. I heard no violence in Hammer’s talk, only coercion.

  “Used,” Hammer said without inflection. “You can say it, Eirn. I were used. It’s common enough, but I knew it weren’t forever. It were easy. If I were a girl, the smith would have had me more often. I think he fancied girls, just didn’t have the good manners to woo them.”

  “Someone had you,” I murmured into my arms. “Do you think I feel any less bitter for that man, making you do something you had no will to do, than you felt for Master Will, threatening rape and a beating?”

  “That fucker hit you!” Hammer barked, his hands growing hard. “He hurt you. No one hits you. No one hurts you… ”

  “Hammer—”

  “I could no more stand by and let that happen than I could watch that cat rip your throat out… ”

  “Hammer—” My stoic Hammer—he rarely grew so impassioned, but this had him in a lather—and his hands pounding out a storm.

  “What I endured were…” I could actually hear him swallow, as he tried to rationalize this. “…unpleasant. It were unpleasant, but it were necessary—”

  “Unpleasant?”

  “There are worse things—”

  “Ouch! Hammer! That hurts!” His hands came up off my shoulders and he were immediately contrite.

  “I’m sorry, Eirn,” he said, looking miserable, and I fought the stiffness and the aches and sat up, the robe flapping around my bare skinny body and heedless of it.

  “Don’t be sorry, dammit!” I muttered, taking his hands in mine. “Don’t be sorry you survived, don’t be sorry you got mad. For the sake of all the gods, don’t be sorry you killed that sack of shite.” I couldn’t look at him. “Just be sorry you didn’t tell me,” I muttered. “I slept next to you most our lives, Hammer. You think I wouldn’t have given comfort to you, during that time?”

  “Didn’t want comfort,” Hammer growled. His blunt, broad fingers stroked mine. “Didn’t want pity. Wanted your attention lots of ways, Eirn; that weren’t one of them.”

  I sighed and leaned my head forward and onto his hard, knotted stomach. He’d taken off his shirt in the warm room as he’d worked, and his skin gleamed in the fire.

  “I wanted your attention in lots of ways, too, idiot. And watching you fuck the innkeeper’s daughter weren’t ever on my list. I won’t want you less if you hurt, you know.”

  Want weren’t the word I needed. It were the only one I had.

  “I won’t want you less skittered of heights,” he grumbled, and I managed to lift my head (slowly) and look him in the eye.

  “Good. I’m not going up there again anytime soon.” I yawned, and he followed, and it were time for bed.

  “Can we read the book tomorrow?” he asked plaintively, and I smiled as he helped me up.

  “Absolutely, but you must hold it on my lap, I think.”

  He bore my weight some more as he helped me hobble off to the other room. “That’s easy enough. What do you want for breakfast in the morning?”

  I thought of what Hammer would want the most, and said, “Fish and eggs, fried in butter.”

  Hammer grunted as we made our way around the bear, who watched us with waiting eyes. “That’s not your favorite, that’s mine. Let me do the wishing for once, right?”

  “Oatmeal, walnuts, honey, and fat butter,” I said a little dreamily. “But I like cooking for you, Hammer.”

  “It’s not cooking when you open the cupboard and there it is,” Hammer said practically. “But you’ve got a fair hand with the cooking when you need to.”

  “I planned to cook the fish,” I told him with some candor, and he laughed a little. We were at the bed by now, and he sat me down and slid the robe over my shoulders. It were an overtly sensual thing, and I raised my hand a little against his touch. He slid his finger down my neck and over my shoulder again, both of us closing our eyes.

  “None of that,” he muttered.

  “I like your touch,” I told him, and his expression as he gazed down on me were free from smile or smirk, from scowl or frown. It were just Hammer, pleased and happy.

  “Did you think we’d end up in a place like this?” he asked from the clear glass blue of the winter sky.

  “No,” I said, letting him swing my naked legs up on the bed. I grasped his hand and rolled to my side, facing outward, and he moved behind me to undress. “I thought we’d end up in a flat, above the smithy of whatever town would take us.”

  “This is nicer,” he mumbled and I had to agree.

  “But anything that’s ours is nice,” I said, believing it. “The cupboard’s only the heart of the home because we keep wishing for each other, Hammer. Are you going to shut the door?”

  The bear had moved toward our room and were looking inside almost wistfully. Hammer startled out of bed, where he were about to settle in, and went out to the front room to blow out the lamps and stoke the fire to embers. The whole time, the bear looked at me as though I were better than dinner. I’d never felt more like strawberries, sugar, and cream in my life.

  It were a relief when Hammer swore at the thing (“Get skittered!”) and swung the door shut in the bear’s irritated face.

  He settled down behind me, his hand wrapped around my middle as he had been, and I almost groaned with how much of my bruised body’s misery were soothed with the touch of his skin on mine.

  “When we leave here,” he mumbled, “we won’t settle for a flat over a smithy. We’ll make ourselves a place like this one. I’ll even plant you roses at the door.”

  Touched more than I could even name, I kissed his hands and said, “I’ll cook.”

  The next day were a soft day. I guess it were Hammer’s turn to wait on me, and he did. He propped up pillows in the sitting room and brought me my breakfast on a tray. The cupboard must have cooked this morning, because the oatmeal were perfect, and I settled into it, pampered in my thick robe, with Hammer doing his best to attend me.

  “It will be a long winter with nothing to do,” I said after some quiet conversation. “How should we fill the hours?”

  Hammer grunted. “How about a cottage?” he suggested, and I looked at him, surprised. He ran to the cupboard and came out with large sheets of paper and some quills, complete with a small bottle of oak gall ink. He brought the small table in from the kitchen and spread the paper out, and together, we started to make plans.

  It wouldn’t be too big; we liked this one. It were cozy. We liked the living room and the bedroom, but we figured there should be a mudroom back behind the kitchen, because we’d need a place to wash up before we tramped our mud and our ash and our ink into our home.

  “You’d still want to work the forge?” I asked, unsure.

  Hammer had nodded, and his pen made blunt, crude strokes on the parchment. “I’d make us some iron fencing around our yard, and our garden,” he murmured. “I’d make it sweet, with curls…” He paused and looked at me earnestly. “You would want a garden, right? That weren’t just for worms?”

  I nodded with some enthusiasm. I had liked my garden, and the fruits of it had saved our lives our first weeks on the road. “Aye,�
� I told him, using the old word with a teasing smile. He smiled back, that eagerness and enthusiasm driving him to make this, the home of our dreams, as real on paper as it seemed to be in his heart.

  We spent the day discussing it, and would spend many days that winter, talking about what we would want our home to look like, and how we would earn our way in the world doing things we treasured. To a farmer’s daughter or an innkeeper’s son, it may have seemed a simple thing to do. To a prince, it were a colossal waste of time. But to us, two boys who had nothing but each other, it were like stretching into the night sky for a star, and finding ourselves just close enough to stroke one with a trembling finger.

  The bear stalked back and forth between the kitchen and the sitting room for a bit as we talked this day, until Hammer opened the door and gave him the option of going outside or staying in and leaving us to our business. He stalked outside with a huff, casting a baleful look at Hammer as he left, and a doleful look at myself. I were too busy thinking on how I’d want my kitchen laid out to do more than roll my eyes at him.

  The next day I could move better, and Hammer and I spent the day dusting and polishing (there were pewter fixtures in the bright yellow kitchen, and in the bathroom) and airing out the bed and changing the linens. These were things the house probably would have done for us, but we didn’t want to impose: we were grateful, and even boys like us knew that grateful guests gave some back. At any rate, I shook the soreness from my body with the movement, and did nothing to make me sore again, and that were a blessing too.

  When we were done, we took turns washing off in the tub (no full bath—that much water more than twice a week seemed a luxury and a crime) and that night, I read to Hammer again. This time I leaned back into his arms so he could help me support the heavy book, and so he could nuzzle my ear, which came as a pleasant, toe-warming surprise. The bear had been out and about all day, but he came in for the evening in time for the story, and lay, muzzle in paws, on that godsawful rug.

  This story were about a girl getting all dressed up for a dance and her step-sisters who wouldn’t let her. We got to the part about the dance, and I grimaced.

  “A dance? Really? All this fretting over a dance?”

  I felt Hammer’s shrug underneath my shoulders. “I think there’s something graceful in a dance,” he said thoughtfully. He shifted. “Here, put the book down and stand up.”

  I did as he asked and stood stiffly, and he stood up before me with one hand behind him and one in the fore, like a young gentleman, and bowed.

  “So now I’m the lady?” I said, a little affronted.

  “You start giving it to me up the arse, and you can lead,” he said mildly, and a wave of heat swept me.

  “You’d let me do that?” I asked gruffly, sweating at the thought.

  He looked at me, surprised, and then shrugged, but I suspected it weren’t no casual thing. “Someday,” he said softly. “When you’re sure.”

  “When I’m sure what?” We were standing across from each other in this odd heartbeat of conversation, like two dancers, waiting for music.

  “When you’re sure it’s me.” He didn’t wait for my reply, though, but took my hand in his and pulled me in. “Step forward, good. Now step back. Now I’m going to put my arm about your waist, follow my lead.”

  And I did.

  Hammer had spent time in the tavern, and he’d seen the country dances, and even the scandalous waltz. It were the waltz we danced now, with our bodies pressed together and Hammer’s measured count of “One-two-three, one-two-three” marking the time of our feet. It felt good to be in his arms, good to be moving to music, even the roughly hummed music from Hammer’s throat. The bear watched soberly—and, a mite resentfully to my way of thinking—from his place by the fire, but whatever or whoever the great beast were, it couldn’t distract me from the sweetness of Hammer and me, dancing in the heart of a magic home.

  When my feet had the hang of it, I nuzzled his throat with my nose and lips, and caught Hammer when he almost stumbled.

  “That’s not part of the dance,” he murmured. He did like his life orderly.

  “Can we add it?” I asked, placing another kiss on the corner of his mouth. He raised his head and captured my mouth fully and plundered, while our feet stopped moving one-two-three, and our bodies started moving come-fuck-me.

  “Aye,” he pulled back to whisper, and we’d reached the part of our evening when we were done with talking. I opened my mouth to him and his hands yanked at the hem of my loose shirt and at the strings of my trousers. The shirt were over my head in a moment, though it hurt to break the kiss, and my trousers were at my knees, and all while Hammer were still fully clothed. I made a sound then, of protest or summat, and before I could make another, Hammer had turned me around and planted my hands firmly on the back of the couch, bending me over so my arse were in the air.

  “How sore are you still?” he asked gruffly, and I suppressed a twinge of muscle at my thigh and arm and answered, “Not sore enough to pass this up!”

  From my position, bent over and vulnerable and dying for Hammer’s hands on my skin, I caught the eyes of the bear, who were staring at me with summat like hunger. I didn’t care. I turned my head from him and concentrated on Hammer’s rough palms, skimming my ribs and my waist and my thighs.

  “I thought you said…” because I’d been thinking of taking him, but this pose were a familiar one these last months—although the furniture were new. He kissed the back of my neck, and the join of my shoulder, and started nipping his way down my spine.

  “Not tonight,” he muttered. His touches were reverent on my skin, and I spent a moment thinking about how the nature of Hammer’s touch had seemed to change from those first rough pawings to now. Had my touches changed? I hoped so. The way I’d felt had deepened these past months, I hoped my touches had too.

  He kissed his way, with that tender, deep press of lips and skin, down to the base of my spine, and I had to lean heavy on the chesterfield because my knees weren’t up for the job.

  Then he got behind me and sank to his knees.

  “Ham… gods… ahhhhhh… gods!” The air exploded from my lungs as he framed my arse with his blunt hands, parted my cheeks with his thumbs, and used his tongue on my hole until I screamed with the thought of it. I muffled the sound against the cloth of the chesterfield, and before I were done, he’d replaced his tongue with his fingers and then he stood and brought me flush with his frontside, and his fingers were replaced by his cock.

  I were more than ready. He stretched his way into my backside, thick and hard inside my clenching body, and wrapped his arm around my chest, keeping me immobilized and close against him.

  “More!” I begged.

  “More?”

  “All, Hammer. All!” His hips swung forward and there he were, flush against my arse, and I howled and gasped. The new angle gave him all sorts of access to me that he hadn’t had before, and one of his hands slid down to my cock, and the other hand stayed there, splayed against my throat, while I panted and begged and screamed.

  It were over quickly, on my end. It weren’t long before I moaned, hard, and my cock spurt against Hammer’s stroking hand. He growled then and thrust harder and faster, while I whimpered, still aroused but no longer swollen and aching.

  “Like this dance?” he panted behind me, and I gasped at a particularly savage thrust.

  “My favorite sort of ball,” I panted back, and the sound he made seemed to crawl out of him, painfully and almost sad.

  “Gods, Eirn…gods….” He came in a hot rush, quaking against me like an oak in a windstorm, as my spend cooled on my stomach, and his hand rested sticky against my thigh.

  His breathing were harsh against my neck, and I cuddled his hand against my chest and shook with him.

  “It’s better,” I whispered in wonder. “It’s better now than it were at the beginning.”

  “Aye,” he muttered, and I could feel his breath on my skin. “And it wer
e pretty good at the beginning.”

  Hammer wandered around the cottage, blowing out lamps and damping the fire, and I settled our book and put it away. The bear watched him, even as I gathered our clothes for the basket in the bedroom. I didn’t like that look in the creature’s eyes and I told him so.

  “Hammer and Eirn,” I said. “There aren’t no Eirn and great beastie without Hammer, so you’d better stop looking like you’ll eat him if I’m not here to stop you. No Hammer, no Eirn, you hear?”

  And by my gods, that thing’s expression turned crafty.

  I said nothing to Hammer as we slid in between the sheets together, the ropes beneath the mattress making homely, creaking sounds as we did. The bear were enchanted—there weren’t no other answer—but he weren’t planning to eat us as we slept, or he wouldn’t be eating the fish from the cupboard. Besides, Hammer were already sleeping, his face nestled into the space between my head and my neck. I thought it would keep until morning.

  An hour before dawn I awoke, my face buried in Hammer’s neck. I knew him by his smell, and by the smattering of coarse hair in the center of his chest.

  There were a nude male body behind me, and a firm, long-fingered hand sliding between my thighs and crooking my knee up so I were spread open. That hand came between my legs, cupped my testicles gently, and stroked my morning erection until I came more than slightly awake, and realized that I were facing Hammer, and these invading hands, these sure fingers, these were not the hands of the man I’d thought to have in my bed.

  “Hammer?” I murmured in confusion, and Hammer blinked bleary eyes at me, and then widened them.

  “Who the fuck are….”

  The hand moved to come around my hip, and the thing made a sound like the bear.

  Hammer and I both froze in recognition, and my body were open, sloppy, dilated from Hammer’s pleasurable use of it earlier. It were easy—as sex can be—so easy, for the man, the bear in the man’s body, the stranger we knew, to slide his cock inside.

  I gasped, and threw my head back, obviously not in pain.