InsaneJournal

Vinland Saga Fic: "Snow" (AU)
Title: Snow (AU)
Fandom: Vinland Saga
Characters: Bjorn, Canute
Rating: PG for implications
Length: 1542 words
Warnings: Vague spoilers through Chapter 48 of the manga.
A/N: Follows Purpose. This is a timeline featuring an alternate ending to Chapter 45.



The room is warm and all he wants is snow. He knows it lies thick on the ground outside, because he had been in it, his blood stained it, and there’s blood still staining the cloth that wraps his stomach, his side. But he’s been watching it—the blotch hasn’t moved, hasn’t grown. There’s only the heat that won’t leave him, that is always there, and he wants snow.

He wants to stand, too—his body was not made for a bed—but that he cannot do, that much he knows. He will not undo the prince’s work, not after what it has cost him in pain, in promises, but there is no one here now to ask, not even the priest, whose face is shaven now—Bjorn remembers that, from the moments of waking—but he still has that look about him. The look that makes Bjorn want to cover it with his hand, cover and squeeze until bone and muscle give, and his left hand tightens into the fist that wants to contact something. But he cannot get up—he would only fall, bleed out slowly, shamefully, and that he will not do—cannot get up and cannot cool the heat in himself. But neither will he shout, call for someone.

So he waits, thinks instead of remembering. When he was young, very young, his older brother had a fever, and his mother held Ulf in a stream. She had had to crack the ice—she took an axe, Bjorn remembers that. When she brought Ulf back, his lips were blue and his fingers white, but he was standing by morning. He wants snow. There is a cup beside his bed, and when Askeladd sat with him, the water didn’t run from his side, and so he drinks, though the reaching hurts. It is good—cool, like the prince’s hands—and he holds the water in his mouth, as though it can calm the heat in his tongue. It doesn’t, but it helps. He throws back the blanket that covers him, too, but the room still feels warm—so much warmer than he knows it is outside, and that is where he should be, where he is most used to being. But he is not getting up, not today, so he closes his eyes and tries to remember cold.

He wakes to the sound of water filling the cup, but he doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t want to look at the priest, his strange sunken eyes and drooping mouth that issues stranger talk, but it might, too, be Askeladd—unlikely, because Askeladd is busy, that much Bjorn knows, because Askeladd always is—and so he opens his left eye. It is the prince, and the prince should not be filling a cup for him. Bjorn reaches, closes his hand on the thin white wrist, and the prince does not startle.

“You are awake. I thought so.” He cuts away the stained bandage, and Bjorn thinks his skin will hiss at the touch. He cranes his head to look—he hasn’t seen what has been done to him—and he wishes that were not his skin, his flesh. Where there had been two jagged tears, crossing each other—that much he had felt keenly enough—now there are blistered burns over them, and he can still see where cuts are beneath, can smell the searing meat from memory. He has seen more gore, for certain, but this disturbs—he should not be alive. It makes no sense that he is, burned within and without, so unnaturally done, but the prince’s calm face is not disturbed. He looks well enough pleased at what he sees, and he uncovers a small pot of something that smells of cold.

The prince glances at him. “This will not be pleasant,” he says, “but it will help, after.” He gathers the ointment on his fingers, smoothes it over the wound with a touch Bjorn can see is gentle, but it feels as though he rakes with his blunt nails. Perhaps he growls through his teeth, but he does not open his mouth to cry out, and the prince glances at him again. The hand that is not salving pats the breadth of his chest for a moment, and Bjorn holds his breath entirely. He will not make another sound.

The mess of it all disappears again under fresh cloth, and it hits him: there is royalty touching him, for who else could be so unthrifty with so much new linen?

“Prince,” he says, and Canute’s cool, white hand touches his thigh this time, as if to say, “Hush,” as if Bjorn were the one who could not yet grow a beard, and he puts his head down again. It is coolness, and he is a prince—he will do as he wills, and it is his will that bends everything around them now. The hand stays, the prince looking at something, the fold of the cloth or the secureness of its end, and the hand stays, there, on his thigh, small and white and cool. He has no way to stop the twitch of his prick, and the understanding comes slowly: he has no cover, neither blanket nor braies. His clothes—trousers, jacket, helm—are in a corner; he sees them.

It is possible the prince won’t notice, that he will finish with his fussing and walk away, that far-off focus already attending to something else, but he bends closer to look at some other small wound that’s scraped higher on Bjorn’s ribs and his hair falls forward, brushes Bjorn’s side, and he is rigid. The room gets hotter, or it is only his cheeks—he should not be embarrassed, has never been before, and the prince looks enough like a comely girl, what of it—but still he reaches for the crumpled blanket. It hurts to reach—it’s beside his knees, and he should not bend—

Canute looks first at his face. “Will you not lie still?” But he notices, too, the reach. “Ah,” he says, “it is cold in here.” He turns his head to pull up the blanket, and his hand stops, stuttered, mid-air, for a moment. It is not cold in this room. It is as hot as fire. He tugs the blanket to Bjorn’s shoulders, and his knuckles touch Bjorn’s chest. The blanket will not lie flat, tented high over his groin, and Bjorn is certain living was not the wisest thing he’s ever done. The prince’s eyes are wide, his peculiar calm unsettled for a moment, and Bjorn feels somehow better—and worse—for that. His size is not only in his barrel chest, and he should make some joke, say something to pink those fair cheeks because it’s always been a matter of boasting for him—and why shouldn’t it be?—but he cannot say anything. The prince makes his tongue dumb, and he has never been good at talking, not like Askeladd. And so the strange silence lengthens, and it is the prince who breaks it.

He puts another half-inch of water in the cup—pretense—and he stands. “Do you need anything?” His voice affects its customary evenness, but Bjorn watches his eyes pull to the side, dart forward again. Bjorn shakes his head, and the prince turns to go, and that’s not right. He wants—he reaches, catches the prince’s thick cloak. Canute looks over his shoulder, faces him more properly. “Yes?”

“Snow,” Bjorn says. Let me lie in it, let it be cold.

Canute looks puzzled a moment, then his chin dips. “A moment.” He takes up the bowl that has held broth and bitter tinctures, carries it outside. He returns with a clean, white mound, and the prince’s hand is red. He puts the bowl beside the bed, watches Bjorn scoop some out, put it on his tongue, and it is blessed cool.

“Is there anything else?” The prince puts the back of his hand on Bjorn’s forehead, and Bjorn knows he checks for fever, but that is not the matter. It is simply that Bjorn needs the snow, and the prince’s hand is chilled with his task, from what he has done at a simple warrior’s request. Bjorn takes the prince’s wrist again, turns his hand, presses it against the side of his neck where the blood pumps thick and hot beneath the skin, where it would spray were there a cut, and holds it there until palm and fingers are warmed.

He lets go the prince’s hand and shakes his head. Canute nods, his cheeks pinked now, says he must go, that the priest will look in on him later, if Bjorn needs anything, he need only shout, for there are enough who will hear him. Bjorn puts more snow in his mouth, feels the flakes smoothe into wet nothing, feels the afterimage of the prince’s hand on his neck, his thigh. He shakes his head. He has snow. He needs nothing more.