Shattered Ice

Read at your own risk.
There are no happy endings here.

Title: Shattered Ice, part 5
Author & email: pharaohs_kitty and surreal
Type (slash/het/gen): slash
Pairing: Tristan/Arthur
Rating: NC-17, rape, domination/submission darkfic
Summary: Arthur takes advantage of Tristan's grief
Archive: Feel free and if you can do better with this idea, help yourself.
DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own in any way, shape or form the characters, setting, original plot or anybody or anything else mentioned. I make no money off of this to pay my never-ending bills.
Beta credits: surreal_44


Shattered Ice Part 5


Arthur inhaled deeply outside Tristan's room. He would be able to do this. It was a uncomplicated thing. He would go into the room, apologize (preferably without actually looking at Tristan) and leave again (preferably without touching Tristan, because one simple touch would lead to the monster taking control). He was still lingering outside the door gathering his courage when it opened and Bors came out.

"How is he?"

"Calm. Sitting on the bed like he's made of stone now. Course we all know better now, don't we?"

Arthur nodded. "Lancelot bleeds, but he'll be fine. A few stitches and a few days of lying still will set him to rights."

"Too bad." Bors hawked and spit on the ground. "Would have been better I think, if Lancelot had been required to lie still a long time and think on his sins."

Arthur smiled wryly. "I was going to speak to him about those sins. If we speak of the same stupidity Lancelot has been committing lately. It's why I was there at the tavern."

"Well, don't forget to speak to him about it." Bors slammed open the door. "HEY DAG! Let's go. Arthur has come."

Dagonet reluctantly detached himself from the wall in Tristan's room. He didn't want to leave Tristan alone with Arthur. If what he feared was true.... "I won't leave you alone with him if you ask me to stay."

Tristan's head came up sharply to end in an incredulous stare at Dagonet. The concern and barely leashed anger Tristan read there startled him. After the first moment of astonished shock, he seemed to know what Dagonet was thinking and turned his head to look at Arthur in the hall. "Go. This is what I have chosen." The words were so low that Dagonet nearly didn't hear them. Tristan's entire being was focused on the man in the hall. It WAS a man standing there and not his commander. Somehow Dagonet could tell the difference. A man with unnatural needs was this new Arthur. His green eyes blazed with the strange fires of it.

Dagonet slightly inclined his chin indicating that he'd heard Tristan and moved out of the room past Arthur. Tristan struggled against his childish need to yell 'Come back and save me!' He had to do this. No one would save him, no one could save him from the path he'd chosen himself.

Arthur feared to moved into the room. Crossing the threshold of Tristan's personal space suddenly seemed too dangerous. Perhaps it would be better to send for Tristan in the morning. Tristan was watching him with eyes that glittered behind his veil of hair hanging across his face. How Arthur missed being able to look up from his desk and see that face, so fine and aristocratic with the cut cheekbones and kissable mouth. He missed watching Tristan flick his tongue across his top teeth when he was concentrating. He missed seeing Tristan's careful touch as he wound the fine threaded twine around feather and arrowhead.

The monster inside him prodded other memories to the surface which Arthur desperately tried to push back into the dark depths of his mind: seeing Tristan's face contort with begging denial of Arthur being inside him, the feel of Tristan's skin beneath Arthur's fingertips as Arthur clenched tight hold upon Tristan's body which was writhing to get away, and the heat of Tristan curled beneath Arthur, Arthur's whole body covering Tristan in ownership. Arthur paced back and forth in front of Tristan's door. He HAD to get these evil thoughts out of his mind, drown these evil needs with prayer. Never again. He'd promised Tristan never again. He would not, he MUST not...'Lord, I beseech thee. Help me...'

Tristan sighed. They could be here all night before Arthur got himself under control enough to enter. He didn't want Arthur to have himself leashed anyway. So much easier to push Arthur if the monster already had sway.

"You going to stand out there all night, Roman? Or you going to come in and tell me what a naughty bastard I've been? Tell me how wrong it is that I have injured a brother Knight." Tristan spit. "Brother Knight. My brother is DEAD! He's dead and Lancelot is no kin of mine."

Arthur reluctantly crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him. "I did not come to you to speak of that. Rather, I wished to speak of your slain brother." With as much tact as he could muster considering the monster demanding to be fed in the back of his head, Arthur asked, "Did you not know that most of the Knights believed Percival to be your lover? Even I. Percival was never seen to lay down with women or other men. We just assumed it was that he had no need of it with you as his beloved."

Arthur smiled with bittersweet memory of those days when he'd envied Percival even as he approached Tristan's rigid cross-legged position on the bed. Tristan had an unreadable expression on his face, so Arthur continued his explanation, profoundly wanting Tristan to understand why so many people had believed he and Percival to be lovers, especially Arthur himself.

"I believe that all were envious of the two of you. Percival was ... joyous. Speaking to him left one happy. Being near him made one giddy. He was so very beautiful... and you, you were always there behind him, watching over him. If he wanted ale, you were pressing it into his hands. If his gear needed care, you took care of it. If he was sad, you would find the perfect word to say to turn him back into ... joy. Do you not see why we believed it so?" Arthur knelt on one knee beside the bed now, looking with imploring eyes at Tristan, his hands carefully placed on the bed far enough away from Tristan to not disturb him, at least Arthur hoped it so.

"He was my Isolde's brother, my beloved's brother. He was my baby brother. He was all the world to me after ...." Tristan untangled his legs and flopped face down, looking away from Arthur on his bed. "She's gone, he's gone... they died and left me here." Tristan's hand stroked the empty bed beside him.

Arthur closed his eyes against the pain as Tristan's words sank in. Isolde. Percival's sister. Beloved of Tristan. Blue eyed Percival. The little blue eyed whore Ginnade. Jealousy flared into seething hatred. This was HIS Knight, HIS. He would share with no one. Fighting for composure, attempting to restrain the beast that repeatedly thought about the rapture of mastering Tristan, the ecstasy of invading, penetrating, HAVING... Arthur shuddered, lost inside abhorrent thoughts. He would NOT. Never again.

Tristan's voice lashed at him, "I have had enough of that pompous ass, Arthur. He gets in my way again, so much as speaks to me with a single word of disrespect..." Tristan turned to face Arthur. "I'll kill him next time. Bedivere as well. The others only follow their lead. I have had enough of them."

Arthur's eyes snapped open to meet the fuming furnace of Tristan's. "It is for me to deal with. I had not known of their mistreatment of you. I do now. Like you they are subject to punishment for the mistreatment of a brother Knight. Like you, they will face the consequences of their actions. Unfortunately it will be a while before Lancelot may. You nearly broke his hard head." Arthur's voice was firm. It was a commander's responsibility to deal with those who broke the rules. If all the Knights started taking matters into their own hands, soon he'd have none left.

"Going to 'punish' me again?" Tristan's voice dripped sarcasm all over the room's already tense atmosphere. Tristan leaned in towards Arthur until he was nearly nose to nose with him.

Arthur took a deep breath and shook his head in denial. "No, you will receive your punishment in front of the others this time. For everyone's sake."

"Coward." Tristan bit the word out. "You are nothing but a Roman sanctimonious craven coward."

Tristan was literally vibrating with the power of his rage. Arthur's beast howled with the yearning to TAKE Tristan. The craving to silence Tristan's vicious words by covering his mouth with Arthur's hand, the desire to strip Tristan of his clothes and teach him who was stronger, the need to feel bare back and ass under Arthur's own body as he forced Tristan to yield to Arthur's will, to capitulate to Arthur's commands; it all surged through Arthur's veins and made him shudder with voracious lust. He would NOT. Never again.

Tristan turned back face down on the bed and defiantly ignored the now seething Arthur. "Maybe I'll just kill that prick and be done with it!"

"You will leave him to ME!" As Arthur roared the words, his hand shot out and closed on Tristan's shoulder in an effort to turn Tristan to face him. The moment his fingers closed on Tristan's shoulder, all of his carefully won control was lost to him. He pushed Tristan over onto his back, or did Tristan roll with his push so that Arthur ended up on top of him? Tristan's eyes were full of something, or were before he closed them.... what exactly was that?

Arthur's left hand slid under and around Tristan's neck lifting his face to Arthur's mouth even as his right hand sought to pull up on Tristan's tunic enough for his fingers to slide under seeking bare skin. As his mouth eagerly sought out the taste of Tristan's neck, his right hand glided across the taut quivering belly of the man beneath him, feeling the softness of the skin there before delving under the cloth covering Tristan's crotch. His hand closed on Tristan's limp prick, fondling with little tenderness and much greed. Tristan gasped and tried to wriggle away from the touch, eyes still closed.

Arthur demanded, "LOOK at me, damn you. Look at what you have loosed within me!"

Tristan opened his golden brown eyes to Arthur's order. Arthur was stunned by the look there. Tristan was trying to hold down his disgust and revulsion, trying to let go, trying to accept Arthur's touch.

"Please, Arthur..."

The whimper combined with Tristan turning his head away nearly undid Arthur, the pounding beat of lust climaxing suddenly in his gut. For whatever reason, Tristan was surrendering to Arthur's assault but his Knight didn't like it, didn't want it, experienced no pleasure in it. Arthur bit his lip hard as he clenched his thighs across Tristan's right leg. Tristan may not be fighting him on it, but the fact that Arthur was touching him was repellent to him. Arthur nearly came from the sheer rapture of Tristan's submission.

"Why, Tristan? Why?" and the question was filled with all the wonder Arthur felt. He buried his face in Tristan's hair and whispered it again, "Why?"

"Does it matter why? I am here. It's what you want isn't it? To do this. Isn't it enough for you that I'm going to do this?"

"No. I have to know WHY, Tristan. You must tell me."

"You cannot go on as you are, Arthur. How long can you fight yourself over this? You want this...this ...." Tristan's words trailed away as he searched for another way to say 'this rape of me'. "You cannot continue fighting it. Either I go, and we both know you would search for me, so leaving would not be enough.... I would have to be dead. Either I go or I give you what you need."

Tristan huffed bitterly. "...and if I was no longer here, how much longer would it be before you began craving another? Began wondering what it would be like to have some other crying out for you to stop? So there is only one choice here for me. Kill you and let the Woads devour everything, or ...this."

Arthur shook with need as he absorbed the fact that Tristan was committing himself to Arthur's will. Tristan would allow Arthur to take what he wanted, when he wanted. But would it be enough to silence the beast? Would Tristan's willing surrender be the same? Or would he wake tomorrow and lust after some other Knight's helplessness?

"Tristan...." Arthur moaned against Tristan's neck. "If this doesn't work... you must...promise me, you must..."

"It's all right, Arthur. I will. I promise." Tristan snorted. "It would probably be quite easy."

"At the first sign, promise me!"

"I promise."

Arthur rolled off of Tristan and stood beside the bed. "This is your room, where you sleep, where Percival slept. I ... I don't want to take you here. Come with me to mine. Now." He stretched out his hand to the prone archer. The relief that flooded as Tristan allowed Arthur to pull him up to his feet was bountiful. Tristan would obey. Arthur grinned wryly, "Besides you need to explain a few drawings to me."

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Arthur and Tristan walked through the halls, down steps and up steps, side by side and footsteps echoing like remnants of escape. There wouldn't be any escape for either of them. This would be a binding beyond imagining. Arthur kept darting quick glances at the man beside him, torn between desire and fear that Tristan would stop and say 'no, I won't do this'. Tristan met those worried looks with a seemingly amused look of his own that said 'I won't change my mind.' It was all some weird mockery of the first time Arthur had coaxed a woman into following him to his bed. He even felt like the callow youth he had been.

Arthur slammed the bolt on his own door home as they entered. He touched the bolt with fingers that shook. He'd never locked his door before, even when he'd taken Tristan the last time. The clatter of metal on the table made him turn around. Tristan was disarming himself. Arthur counted three blades on the table already as a fourth mysteriously appeared from up his sleeve. Arthur winced, HIS Knight had been living as they did in enemy territory. Arthur vowed to see to it there would be no need in the future. Lancelot and the others would learn to respect what was Arthur's.

Tristan looked at Arthur, suddenly unsure of what to do next. What would feed the beast within? How much fear and disgust was needed to satisfy it? Could he pacify Arthur's hunger this way or would he end up killing the man he'd once admired? end up killing the man he'd followed with great devotion over these years?

Arthur crossed the room and swept His Knight into a hug, careful not to bind him too tightly yet. He pressed frantic little flutters of kisses across Tristan's face and took Tristan's ear into his mouth. It astonished both of them when Tristan mumbled, "Arthur, that feels....that feels..." and sighed in delight, melting under Arthur's hands. Tristan flushed red across his cheeks and straightened as Arthur backed off to arm's length and STARED at him. "I think my ear is connected to other parts of me. You,... you..." Tristan cheekbones had barely lost the first blossoming of blood before he blushed more and dropped his gaze to his hands, fidgeting under Arthur's disbelieving gaze. Tristan muttered, "...I don't know how it happened. I don't WANT to know."

Arthur wasn't sure how he felt about that. Always before it had been Tristan's disgust, and dislike that had excited him. Tristan was blushing even harder now and further, a tide of red rolling down the side of his neck. He was embarrassed by this. Ashamed perhaps that Arthur, another man, had found any way to delight him? Tristan's eyes were still cast down and he was trying gently to get loose from Arthur's hands. Arthur grinned, how many other ways could he make Tristan feel pleasure and hate it? What if he...?

Arthur snickered and pulled Tristan back in. "Not so fast, my Knight." With deft fingers, Arthur unlaced Tristan's surcoat and pushed it off of him. With hands made gentle, Arthur bunched the light blouse fabric and pulled it over Tristan's head, throwing it to the ground. With fingers made bold by the fact that Tristan was permitting him to touch, Arthur laced his hand up behind Tristan's head in the braided hair and pulled Tristan in to kiss him deeply. The minute Arthur's lips and tongue demanded entrance, Tristan's mouth opened docilely. Arthur grew heady at the taste of it.

When Arthur finally pulled his mouth away, he whispered into Tristan's ear. "My Knight, mine. No others. Not even the whore."

Tristan's eyes were suffering with the idea of it, but he nodded in agreement. "No one but you, Arthur." He turned his head away to look at the wall. "No one but you." The words whispered like a fine blade cutting across his chest, slicing him open to pain and sucking the air out of his lungs as he said them.

With hands rubbing over Tristan's arms and chest and back, Arthur tried to memorize the feel of Tristan in his embrace. This was HIS now. Dipping his mouth to taste the skin of Tristan's neck, Arthur adroitly unlaced Tristan's breeches, pushing them down over the sharp hipbones. Once Tristan's ass was bare Arthur gripped it with one hand and slung the other arm under Tristan's armpits hoisting Tristan into the air, grunting with the strain of it as he set Tristan's bare ass on the table.

Arthur plundered the warmth that was Tristan's mouth again before pushing his Knight backward. "It was only luck I didn't set you on your sheathed daggers." He laughed. "That would have been...awkward."

Tristan's stomach still roiled with what he was letting happen, but crazily that struck him as funny as well and he snorted. "Awkward, yes." He met Arthur's eyes and let the amusement show. This was frightening him in a way he hadn't foreseen. He didn't want to laugh with Arthur. He didn't want to feel pleasure with Arthur. He was doing what he had to, because he had no choice. This wasn't something he wanted; or at least he thought it wasn't, was it?

Arthur had turned to removing his boots and Tristan looked down at the top of Arthur's head. What was it he felt now for this man? Tristan hated him, hated what Arthur had done so recently to him. But still...it was ARTHUR, the man who'd taken in two stray Sarmatians when he hadn't had to, when he could have turned them away and left them to the mercy of angry vengeful Romans. This was the commander who'd treated them all as men, who'd stood up to Romans who would've carelessly thrown their lives away in battle. Arthur had bound himself to them as much as they had bound themselves to him. Could he forget the years of loyalty and respect in the face of the months of madness? What he was about to allow Arthur to do, would this be all there was between them forever now?

Having fully stripped Tristan, Arthur stood away from the table and looked around the room. There, over the window on the shelf. He darted away and returned quickly with the vial of oil. "This time I don't want you to take weeks to heal. I want to be able to do this again ...fairly quickly." Arthur shook the small bottle of linseed oil he used to wipe down his sword before opening it and coating his fingers with it.

"Lay back, Tristan. Lay down on the table." Arthur's face grew heavy with lust as Tristan complied. "Pull your feet up on the table and move to the edge so..." and Tristan obeyed. Arthur's loins were a torment of hungers. He filled with the need to TAKE.

Tristan was fully exposed in this position as Arthur had imagined it a thousand times. He slicked his fingers with oil and pressed into Tristan's anus upward behind his balls. There would be another time for trying to see how Tristan dealt with feeling pleasures he did not want. For now, there was a great appetite within Arthur that had to be fed.

Even as his fingers smoothed a path into Tristan that, even now with Tristan's willing surrender, remained clenched tight against Arthur, he watched the signs on Tristan's face and ate them up. Pain and dislike and an endless unvoiced denial of what was about to happen marched across Tristan's features and his eyes screwed shut against the vision of Arthur doing this to him.

"Open your eyes, Tristan. Watch me. Tristan, open your eyes." It was heady triumph to Arthur as Tristan submitted to his order. The golden honey eyes opened and shrieked soundless dread as Arthur's fingers slipped out of Tristan's body and unlaced Arthur's breeches with slow deliberation. Arthur's cock was no sooner freed than it began seeking the warm depths of Tristan's ass.

With slow movements, Arthur pushed into Tristan while gripping Tristan's legs, watching Tristan's eyes as a cat watches a caged bird. Finally Arthur could no longer exert any control and lunged deeply into Tristan. With great sweeps of his hips, Arthur rammed into Tristan, watching each deep thrust echo in Tristan's eyes of pain and disgust. Fully sheathed in Tristan's body, Arthur reached down and gripped the bony hips, lifting Tristan up and in to meet each plunging downward, inward movement of his own until the rapture of POSSESSING Tristan overcame him and he climaxed deep inside HIS Knight.

Every bone and muscle felt wrung with weary exhaustion as Arthur painfully withdrew from Tristan. He helped Tristan off the table and both of them staggered as muscles overused and overtensed objected to their standing. Arthur leaned against the table and held the still trembling scout in his arms until he could stand on his own.

"Now do you want to explain to me why it says 'Romans Suck' over my table?"

"No." Tristan sighed as he looked away from Arthur's feral grin.

"MY Knight. When I ask you to answer a question, answer it." Arthur's voice was lazy but firm. "When I give you an order on the battlefield, you may question it and you may object to it, but in the end you obey my decisions." Arthur's rueful eyes acknowledged that he knew Tristan was right about how mired he'd been in the fight against himself and how bad his decision making had been lately. "Here in this room, you are MINE. I want you to be mine completely. When I tell you to do something, do it." Arthur slid a hand under Tristan's jaw and turned the sharp face to him. "When I ask you something, answer it. Outside this room, you may decide not to answer,... but it IS likely I'll ask you the same question within these walls."

Tristan quivered as the full impact of giving himself over to Arthur hit him. He buried his face in his hands and bit his lip. He would not whimper in front of Arthur. Arthur didn't need to know how much he hated the idea that Arthur would rule his life completely. He couldn't let that happen. Somehow he would find a way to be free of Arthur some of the time.

"Why does it say 'Romans Suck' over my table?"

"I was bored and angry and it should have been 'Romans Suck Rotten Eggs', but you returned too soon and I didn't know how to spell 'Rotten' anyway."

Arthur glanced up at the ceiling to see where a light mark showed the beginning of the next word. He snickered. Tristan's sense of humour had surprised him. How little he knew of HIS Knight.

"Stay here tonight. I want you in my bed where I can touch you as I wish."

Tristan nodded, his guts twisting with the loss. It had been such brief freedom. He would mourn the ability to slide the bolt on his door and keep everyone out.

Arthur saw the stricken look shadow across Tristan's eyes. Tomorrow would be soon enough to tell Tristan that he'd be sleeping in his own room except on the nights Arthur wanted him to obey. Let Tristan believe he was trapped here tonight. Arthur would savour every moment of this night. Tristan was committing himself to being Arthur's in every way.

The beast inside Arthur licked bloody fangs and flopped contented into torpor. Tristan was HIS.

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TBC and all...
PeeK and Surreal