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Chapter Text

It was just a scratch, Jon would later insist to those few who knew to ask—a lucky shot by one of the few Bolton bannermen left alive. He’d taken advantage of his captor's inexperience as well as Jon's own moment of inattention, much to his private embarrassment.

Still, Jon told himself, it could’ve been much worse.

It had been nearly dusk, the fight for Winterfell long since won and the women and wounded retired into the keep, yet Jon remained down in the yard. Never one to sit idle while others worked, he’d spent the past hours sloughing through ankle-deep filth beside the rest of the men as they heaved bodies into the courtyard at the heart of Winterfell. There, the bodies of Bolton's men were stripped of armor and burned in great, stinking piles, their armor laid in stacks outside the smithy to be washed and melted down.

Though mere hours had passed after what had already been dubbed the “Battle of the Bastards”, the majority of the carnage had since been hauled away. Men of the North and the Vale alike worked with feverish speed, eager as they all were to wash Winterfell castle clean of the Boltons’ stain.

The Free Folk, too, dealt with their dead, though they'd chosen to carry their fallen comrades out into the Godswood where they might be afforded some measure of privacy. The last Jon had seen of Tormund, he'd spared Jon a solemn nod and then waded into the woods with what remained of his kin, the body of a young man cradled like a babe in his arms.

Only Wun Wun had been left in the yard where he’d fallen as he was too heavy to be carried out, though someone had shut the giant’s eyes and a number of small cairns had been stacked atop his chest.

Jon lifted another corpse over his shoulder and trudged into the courtyard. There at the yard’s center lay an enormous pyre that had been cobbled together from the remnants of the palisades outside the East Gate. Piled high with Flayed Men, the fire spewed a pillar of smoke that had already stained the sky above a foul, tarry black.

With a groan, he heaved the corpse onto the flames. The logs spit and squealed as fire consumed the fat of the man's back. Jon gagged and stumbled back, turning away from the heady smoke, its smell cloying and oddly sweet, like roasting offal. He braced his hands over his knees and breathed deep, fighting back the bile in his throat.

Dazed, he looked to the sky, to the east, where more smoke curled high above the Godswood to mingle with the gray twilight. Music wafted over the curtainwall—a man's voice, by the sound of it, singing some familiar, unknown language. Faint though it was, the sound seemed to echo through his chest and settle deep in his bones.

As an outsider, Jon had only caught glimpses of the many traditions and rituals shared by the Free Folk, but he imagined them to be akin in nature to the Folk themselves: hardy, thoroughly practical, stubbornly secretive, and—though he'd never admit it aloud—strangely captivating.

So absorbed was he in the mournful melody that the shouts of men around him didn't register until a weight barreled into him at full tilt, its mailed limbs flailing at him with crazed determination. It was only instinct ingrained by years of training that let Jon pivot with his enemy's momentum, hurling the Flayed Man to the ground.

The man made to rise again, bristling with malice, but in the next instant half a dozen swords ran him through as Stark loyalists rushed to aid their commander. As the Flayed Man fell, a dagger dropped from his limp hand and skittered across the ground.

“Jon!” cried Ser Davos. He dropped the stack of firewood in his arms and ran to Jon’s side, seizing his shoulders. Only after casting a critical eye over Jon’s person and concluding that he remained in one piece did Davos step back with a thunderous frown.

“Your Grace,” he began, and though outwardly Jon retained his “Lord Commander face”, as Ed had once dubbed it, inwardly he shrank. Perhaps his return to Winterfell after all these years had more of an effect on him than he would have liked—standing there in the yard, covered in mud with Ser Davos glaring at him, Jon felt like a scolded child caught sneaking into the armory after dark.

He willed himself not to blush or turn away from Davos’ regard. The Onion Knight sighed and continued more gently, “Your Grace, it’s been a long day. There’s no call to turn it into a long night as well. Perhaps you and the other men should rest and begin again at first light.”

Jon cleared his throat and managed to reply, “Aye, perhaps you’re right.”

Davos nodded and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good lad,” he said, though as he turned away Jon heard him mutter something about “bloody noble fool” and “scared me half to death”.

It was quiet in the room Jon had claimed for his own. The walls of the Great Keep, though damaged, were thick, and shut out the calls of wind and word alike that rang through the courtyard below. Even here, however, smoke lingered in the air. Jon grimaced and told himself that as with all things, in time, the stench would fade.

Across from the cot-like bed, there glowed upon the hearth a guttered fire, likely built by Bolton’s men before the siege began. It was the sole source of light in the tiny room and cast strange shapes in shadow across the cobbled walls. Strangely, the darkness came as a comfort—it felt familiar in a way that much of the scorched, mutilated carcass of Winterfell castle did not.

The moment the latch fell shut, Jon slumped and let his forehead fall against the door with a thunk. A long minute stretched past before he could will himself to walk his weary bones even a step farther.

At last, he straightened, shucked off his boots, and began the familiar motions of cleaning himself up before bed. A proper bath could wait until the morrow but he could at least pry the largest clods of dirt from his clothes, he reasoned to himself, lest they soil his borrowed bedding. His gloves, trousers, and overtunic were a lost cause, so thoroughly encrusted with mud and gore that they’d require a more thorough scouring than he was prepared to give them. His leather bracers and brigandine were more salvageable, as were his underclothes, which were stiff with sweat but otherwise no worse for wear.

It was only because he’d removed his gloves that he felt it: a tiny, almondine slit in the leather just below his ribs. It was nearly neat enough to be mistaken for a torn seam were it not for the odd angle.

Jon peeled back his brigandine and frowned down at the cloth beneath where an identical tear winked back at him.

That’s strange, he thought. He delved a finger through the hole then startled when it kept going, through skin, sinking into slick, numb flesh.

Yanking his hand away, he nearly tripped over his boots in his haste to strip himself of his undertunic and clamber over to the far wall, where a grimy looking-glass was stood.

As always, what caught his eye at first were the scars. Since the night of the mutiny (the night of his death—a thought that still sat hollow in his stomach), the wounds his brothers had left him had scarred over and turned smooth with age, even if the skin in some places had never fully closed. They shone orange in the firelight, pale flesh set eerily aglow.

Among old scars lay a new, unfamiliar wound, drooling blood in a sluggish stream. Jon stared numbly at his reflection, breath caught, though distantly he felt a feeble flutter of panic take wing within his breast. In the dark, the blood looked black and thick as pitch, its flow pulsing in time with the frantic beat of his heart.

It looked like a dead-man’s wound, slowly bleeding out its last, thought Jon.

He skated a trembling hand over his stomach; the touch brought sensation but no pain and a chill skittered down his back at the feeling. The pale figure in the glass stared back at him in morbid fascination. It all reminded him keenly of that first hour after his resurrection, when the lingering chill of death had not yet fled his body and the painful chittering of his teeth and ache in his chest had been all that stood between him and cool, black oblivion.

A knock on his door broke Jon’s reverie—he jumped and nearly tripped over the clothing scattered around his feet. He realized he’d been standing there, staring numbly at the hole in this stomach, for long enough that blood had oozed down his hips and begun to seep into the hem of his white woolen drawers. “A moment!” he cried, cursing.

The visitor either didn’t hear or didn’t listen and continued to pound on the door. “Snow!” boomed Tormund’s voice from the hall. Subtle as ever, thought Jon with a wry smile; he would wake the whole keep before Jon could reach the door at this rate.

He wiped his hands on his bare chest and pulled his undertunic over his head, not bothering with proper clothes. There was no need to stand on ceremony with the Free Folk, least of all Tormund, who’d seen far more of Jon’s body than Jon cared to admit.

Scarcely had Jon undone the latch than Tormund stormed inside. His face and hair were dusted with soot and his eyes were red—from smoke or tears, Jon didn’t know and didn’t dare ask. Tormund’s gaze flitted around the room, blue bloodshot eyes gleaming in the half-light.

Only once he was certain that they were alone did he heave a tremendous sigh as a weight seemed to fall from his shoulders. The ginger giant shed his gloves and trudged over to crouch before the hearth. From within his furs, he produced a few bundles of sticks and set about reviving the embers in the firebox.

Jon shut and relatched the door. Questions swelled in his throat but something in the weary set of Tormund’s shoulders stayed his tongue. Instead, he began to silently gather his discarded armor and stow it against the wall, out of trampling range.

Until the Stark family’s rooms in the Great Keep could be cleaned and aired out—a task to which Sansa had dedicated herself with stoic aplomb—Jon had holed up in one of the many servants’ quarters. It was a humble room but at least it was private, not like the stewards’ barracks at the Watch.

It was warmer, too; unlike the great castles of the South, even servants’ rooms at Winterfell were equipped with a small flue. This had been a matter of practicality as well as consideration by the Starks who’d built the Great Keep—they’d wanted their staff to survive the long winters, after all.

Only when a merry fire was crackling on the hearth did Tormund speak, his voice like a landslide. “We don’t care much for your southern laws,” he rasped. “Don’t hold much by them. I’ll never understand it—all that fuss over blood. Who fucked who, who owns what, it all means less than shit out there.” With a sweep of his arm he gestured vaguely northward, towards the long shadow of the Wall. “When all that matters to you is living until tomorrow. Keeping yourself and your people warm and fed, and safe from what hunts you.”

He paused for long enough that Jon almost prompted him; at last, Tormund softly said, “I think I understand you a bit better now, Little Crow.”

Another long pause, during which Tormund poked at the fire with a pensive frown. “How do you mean?” Jon said, when it seemed that his friend would say no more.

For the first time since entering Jon’s room, Tormund turned to look at him. Whatever his reply, it withered on his lips as he shot to his feet and stalked intently across the room. Bewildered, Jon braced himself for—something. An attack, or an embrace that only felt like an attack—with Tormund, it could be hard to tell either way.

Regardless of Jon’s expectations, he couldn’t quiet his indignant squawk when bear-like arms seized him around the waist and yanked up his tunic. “By all the—what in—Tormund!” He reeled backward, legs colliding with the bed’s end, and pulled at his tunic’s hem. Never before had he felt so like the Free Folk’s name for him: a fussy little crow straightening his mussed feathers.

He only prayed that the grime on his face hid his blush, or else Tormund would never let him forget it.

He needn’t have worried—Tormund had eyes only for the red spot blooming across Jon’s undertunic, the blood dark and damning against the undyed wool. “Damned fucking fool of a crow!” bellowed Tormund, “Was one death not bloody good enough for you?” Fuming, he grabbed Jon by the elbow and hauled him bodily towards the door.

“Tormund. Tormund! Stop, just—honestly, I’m alright!” Trying to yank his arm free from Tormund’s iron grip proved useless so instead he circled around in front of his friend and wedged himself in front of the door.

Tormund scoffed, “‘Alright’? You’re stood there with your guts falling out and you call that alright?” He pulled at the door handle with the hand not clamped around Jon’s arm.

The door’s hinges squealed under the strain but still Jon dug his heels in and leaned all his weight back, though not without a silent apology to Sansa for worsening the Keep’s disrepair. She and the other ladies in charge of castle clean-up wouldn’t thank him for adding onto the ever-lengthening list of items that needed mending. Hopefully, he thought as he heard wood splintering behind him, they would just dismiss this as another casualty of the Boltons’ neglect.

“I swear,” Jon insisted, lifting his tunic. Though the wound appeared no less red or raw than it’d been when first he’d seen it, the bleeding had slowed from a crawl to an ooze, as though Jon’s veins had run dry.

Tormund stilled and his hand fell from the door handle. He stepped closer, sandwiching Jon between himself and the door. Back-lit as he was by the fire, Tormund’s shadowed face was unreadable, yet Jon thought he felt his friend’s horror in the trembling hand that rose to hover between them.

Jon confessed, “I can hardly feel it.” A shiver ran through him when Tormund touched his stomach, his broad palm nearly covering the wound while the other circled around to Jon’s back and anchored there.

Without pain, there was nothing to distract him from the rough skate of Tormund’s hands over his skin. No one else had touched him without intent to harm since Ygritte and towards the end of their relationship, her intent had been to harm him more often than not.

Tormund, though—he gave touch freely and with an ease that Jon himself had yet to master. He touched Jon constantly, from an incidental brush of their shoulders as they walked side by side to a tree-trunk-like arm slung across Jon’s shoulders. Jon had grown so accustomed to his friend’s warm presence at his back that it felt strange to be without him of late—unmooring, as though he’d removed a weighty cloak.

He felt that same lightheadedness now, headier than ever and accompanied by a fluttering in his gut where Tormund’s hands held him. Helplessly he let himself be manhandled across the room, sitting down when he felt the bed’s edge hit the crux of his knees.

He nearly fell over backward when Tormund crashed to his knees, peeled back Jon’s tunic with one hand, and leaned in until his nose almost brushed Jon’s bare stomach.

Jon gave a token squawk of protest, bracing one hand against his friend’s shoulder, but Tormund didn’t seem to notice, so intent was he in his study of Jon’s still-weeping wound. The stream of blood had thickened anew as though in response to the scrutiny, or perhaps due to the quickening of Jon’s heart.

Nearer now to the fire than either the door or the looking glass had been, he saw that the wound itself was smaller than he’d first thought: about the length of a silver stag coin and half as wide, too small to even need stitches. The edges were ragged where the Flayed Man’s dagger had twisted on its way out. Wet, exposed flesh glistened like red gems in the shifting firelight, equal parts sickening and mesmerizing.

Jon hardly noticed Tormund pulling a knife from his belt until his hoarse command: “Take off your tunic.”

Jon obliged, too distracted to object. He stripped and handed the tunic to Tormund, who began cutting the unstained sections into long strips, using one to mop up blood from around the wound. Jon reached out a hand to stay him; “You don’t have to—”

“Fuck off,” replied Tormund gruffly. “You’re still an idiot, no matter what else death made you.” Some manner of dried herb emerged from a fold in his furs. He chewed a palmful of leaves into a sweet-smelling paste, which tingled oddly where he smeared it over Jon’s stomach. He seemed to be taking all of this rather in stride, though Jon noticed that he still hadn’t met Jon’s eyes. Tormund’s gaze stayed fixed ahead as he wound strips of cloth around Jon’s torso, one after another until only a speck of red soaked through the outermost layer.

When he’d finished, he sat back on his heels. The knife and extra herbs vanished into the pockets from whence they’d come while the scraps of soiled wool were tossed onto the fire. The acrid scent of burnt blood hardly registered as it only added to the pyre-smoke smell still clinging to them both. Had it been mere hours since the battle? That morning felt days away from Jon as he sat shivering on the bed, chilled despite the suddenly suffocating heat of the hearth fire. He couldn’t imagine how Tormund fared, mantled in thick furs, though it occurred to Jon that he’d never seen his friend wear anything less.

The silence between them grew thicker until at last, Tormund stood. “There’s work still to be done. We can’t all hide in castles like Southern maidens.” He made for the door, looking as troubled as Jon had ever seen him.

“Wait.” Jon crossed the room and clasped his friend’s shoulder. Tormund stopped and, at long last, met Jon’s eyes with a piercing stare.

For a long moment they stood there in the doorway, each pinned by the other’s gaze, Tormund’s pale eyes searching his face intently. Then a gusty sigh escaped Tormund and the tension fled his frame all at once. He lifted a hand and patted Jon’s cheek more gently than Jon would have thought him capable of.

“Get some rest, Crow.” The door swung shut and, with a rush of cold air from the hall, he was gone.

Adrift in the sudden silence, Jon laid carefully on the bed, mindful of the wound in his side even though it didn’t pain him. Tomorrow, there would be more bodies to burn, a castle to clean, and the North to reluctantly rule. For now, however, Jon could only hope that the new day might let him forget both his dubious immortality and the equally overwhelming echo of Tormund’s large hands pressed into his skin.

Jon watched the shadows dance across the ceiling for a minute longer. Then he shut his eyes tightly, and willed sleep to come.

Chapter Text

In the nightmarish year that followed, it was easy for Jon to forget the latest in his collection of stab wounds. Though his blood had eventually run dry, the wound refused to close. His scars from the mutiny had at least healed part of the way—however, since Jon had realized that he wasn’t quite as mortal as he’d like, it was as though his body had given up the ruse entirely.

The edges of his skin only stuck together if he sat in one place for a very long time and the moment he moved too fast, they burst open again, exposing threads of pale tendon and purplish muscle. Jon dared not tell any maester, not even Sam, for fear that they’d take too great an interest.

Instead, after one too many days spent with his undertunic adhered to his innards, he sewed the damn thing shut himself. He’d sewn himself up once or twice before, in a pinch, and it went far quicker now that he felt no pain. The finished stiches were ugly and itched like mad but they were easier to ignore than the gaping hole in his side had been.

What proved harder to forget was Tormund, who was always impossible to ignore but particularly when he seemed to be around every corner. He remained his usual brash self among other company but often when it was the two of them alone, Jon would catch his friend watching him with a hunter’s quiet focus. Tormund was not daft by any means but he was, by his own description, a man of action. Jon worried over Tormund’s stillness as much as he did the shuttered look on his friend’s face each time Jon caught him staring.

Long after Tormund and the remaining Free Folk had departed for Eastwatch, Jon still felt eyes at his back. The feeling only worsened when the Wall fell and he thought he’d lost his friend for good. Days ran into weeks with no time to grieve, no time to even think, until suddenly, Tormund was there, as alive and enormous as ever. Paradoxically, despite the threat of war hemming them in on all sides, Jon felt steadier with Tormund at his side than he had in his many months alone.

And he had been alone, despite the never ending tide of bodies that surrounded him: drinking, laughing, fighting, dying, familiar faces rushed past him in a river of noise. Tormund was his only constant amid the static, aside from Jon’s remaining siblings.

Or were they his cousins? It didn’t matter now—he couldn’t afford to linger on such thoughts. The truth of his heritage was only one of a list of crises Jon expected to grapple with as soon as this war was through with him.

Only when the ash of the final battle in the Great War for Westeros had settled did he finally get a moment of peace.

Naturally, because the gods had an awful sense of humor, that moment found Jon bleeding like a stuck pig all over his bed.

At least it really was his bed this time, he mused. Though much of Winterfell and the surrounding town had been either burned by dragon-fire or demolished by the Night King’s forces, the Great Keep had remained mostly intact. Scarcely had the Long Night ended than Sansa began to organizing sanctuary for the displaced people of Winter Town in the Keep’s lower levels. Rooms on keep’s upper floors were opened to all those who’d fought the White Walkers and lived to tell of it.

Jon had taken his father’s (uncle’s?) old solar on Sansa’s insistence. Lord Ned Stark’s chambers held no more memories than every other haunted stone of Winterfell castle, so it didn’t bother Jon as much as he thought it should. A long corridor divided this room from the others; the builders’ intent had been to provide the Lord of Winterfell some degree of peace and quiet in his solitude.

“So there I was,” boomed Tormund from far too near Jon’s ear, “In naught but my boots, my pecker near frozen off, and then I turn ‘round and I see her mother coming at me—” He paused and Jon turned around to see Tormund mime running, arms churning up and down, his face theatrically murderous. The bloody rag in his hand only enhanced the effect.

Jon snorted helplessly and turned back around to face the wall. Like the last time Tormund had tended his wounds, Jon was perched on the edge of the bed in only his drawers. His armor, tunics, and trousers were piled atop his and Tormund’s boots beside the door. Tormund sat behind him on the bed, out of sight but as obnoxious as ever as he regaled Jon with bawdy tales of dubious veracity.

“What did you do?” Jon prompted.

“Shit my guts out and ran,” said Tormund cheerfully. “Never went back. I wore my sister’s spare cloak for three weeks until I could trade for enough skins to make another my size.” He dunked the rag, soaked through with Jon’s blood, into the bowl of cloudy, pinkish water resting on the stripped bed. They’d pulled aside all the furs and quilted blankets so as not to stain them, reasoning that the bedsheets underneath would be far easier to launder. In addition to stitching himself up, cleaning blood out of bedclothes was another unfortunate skill Jon had honed in his afterlife.

He stretched his stiff shoulder and winced at the gritty feel of stone splinters embedded inside him. One of the wights had scored a lucky shot—a gash the length of Tormund’s hand that stretched from Jon’s shoulder blade down to the top of his ribs. The wight’s weapon had shattered on impact and the resulting shrapnel rasped like sandpaper against Jon’s rib each time he breathed too deeply. Tormund had spent the last hour plucking bits of what might have been a crude stone cudgel out of Jon’s flesh.

Another jagged pebble clink-ed into the wooden tankard wedged into the bedframe beside Jon’s legs. Jon recalled how after the battle, Tormund had taken one look at Jon’s ripped and bloodied armor, drained his tankard of ale in one pull, and all but dragged Jon up to his rooms and thrown him onto the bed. Jon would never admit, even to himself, of having had dreams of very similar contents.

“This how you imagined I’d take you to bed, Pretty Crow?” Either Tormund had added ‘mind reader’ to his many titles, between Bear Fucker and Giantsbane, or Jon’s posture had somehow given his thoughts away.

“The blood is a surprise,” he chuckled, uncommonly relaxed. His willingness to be teased might have surprised him were it not for the refrain of we lived, thank the gods, we’re alive that left little room in his mind for modesty. The high of victory had left him boneless and slow. Tomorrow would come, as it always must, but for now Jon was happy enough to lean into Tormund’s hands at his back and the easy warmth of this moment.

Tormund’s snort ruffled the hairs at the base of Jon’s neck. “It shouldn’t be. You’ve more holes in you than what’s left of your fucking Wall.” He dropped more stone pieces into the tankard, then stood to throw another log on the hearth. When he rejoined Jon on the bed, he sat nearer than before so that his knees brushed against either side of Jon’s hips. He laid one warm palm over Jon’s shoulder and said, “That’s the easy bits out. There’s a few more, buried deeper.”

He paused, waiting. Jon braced his feet against the cool floor and nodded. “Do it.”

A gasp bit into his last word as he felt fingers slip inside the wound, slithering past skin and muscle. He shuddered and swayed; he might have fallen backward if Tormund’s other hand hadn’t braced against his back. After a pause, presumably to ensure Jon wouldn’t vomit or pass out, Tormund worked two fingers deeper into Jon’s side. The movement made an odd squelching sound as slick flesh parted painlessly around the intrusion. The parallels to other activities weren’t lost on Jon, who made fists in the bedding and tried to think of anything except the slick slide of the hand inside of him.

The thumb of Tormund’s other hand stroked a steady, soothing rhythm back and forth over Jon’s uninjured shoulder. Jon shut his eyes and tried to center all his attention on that rhythm, desperate to ignore the dizzying sensation of movement inside him. Though he knew better now than to expect pain, he hadn’t known that it would feel like this: like he’d fallen off a cliff and then never hit the ground. His mind and body rioted against the incongruity.

No one alive had ever felt this, he was certain. People weren’t meant to feel this way.

Something inside Jon moved too suddenly and he jumped. Tormund stilled and made a soft shushing sound, as though gentling a spooked horse. The hand stroking Jon’s shoulder pushed down hard enough to bruise any mortal man. That single point of pressure became Jon’s anchor as the rest of his body threatened to shake apart.

Sweat poured down his flushed chest as Tormund slowly pulled his hand from the wound, a piece of stone pinched between two fingers. In the absence of pain, Jon’s nerves seemed determined to fill the void with every other possible sensation at once.

Distantly, it occurred to him that he was harder than he’d ever been in his life.

Just when he thought it’d never end, Tormund’s hand withdrew fully. Jon came crashing down to earth with a punched-out sigh, grateful for the reprieve. A long, thin shard of stone clattered into the tankard. “That’s one,” muttered Tormund.

“Didn’t hurt a bit.” Though this was true, Jon couldn’t help but think it didn’t do justice to the tumult still roiling in his breast. “Keep going.”

Tormund kept going. The curl of fingers inside Jon’s body was no less overwhelming than it’d been the first time but at least now he knew what to expect. He managed to relax his muscles enough that the next few shards emerged with ease, one after another until the tankard at his side was nearly half-full with stones.

Lulled by the spell of calloused hands in and on him, Jon fell into a sort of trance. He stared into the blazing hearth and felt himself sink farther into the bed. He couldn’t tell how much time passed before Tormund’s gruff, “Last one,” brought him back. Jon nodded his permission, not trusting himself to speak.

The last shard’s extraction went smoothly, at first. It was thicker than the others and had burrowed deeper. Try as he might, Tormund couldn’t budge it with two fingers alone.

Jon took slow, shallow breaths as Tormund slid his thumb in alongside his middle and forefinger. His knuckles pressed into the skin below the wound and for one wild instant, Jon feared that Tormund’s entire hand might slip inside him. The idea thrilled and terrified him in equal measure.

Inch by agonizing inch, Tormund drew stone from flesh. The damn thing felt as thick as Jon’s finger, though perhaps not so wide as Tormund’s.

Jon pushed his feet firmly into the floor and tried to hold himself steady. A thread of blood trickled down his side and he fought the urge to squirm. His persistent erection certainly didn’t help, nor did the heat of Tormund’s breath on the back of his neck.

After a minute that felt to Jon like a lifetime, the shard came loose. “Got the fucker!” huffed Tormund. He crooked his fingers, nudged the shard into the crease of his palm, then dropped it into the tankard where it landed atop the others with a thunk.

Jon inhaled deeply and then sighed in relief when he felt nothing grate against his ribs. At last, it was done. Exhaustion washed over him anew and he thought wryly that this might have been the longest and strangest day he had ever experienced, or would likely ever experience again. He opened his mouth to say something, perhaps to thank Tormund, or just to comment on the mad absurdity of their lives.

It hardly mattered—before he could speak, Tormund pulled his hand free of Jon’s body. In its haste, one of his fingers scraped along the bare length of Jon’s rib. The touch reverberated through Jon’s entire body, a hum that shivered through every one of his bones.

A low moan escaped his open mouth before he could stifle it. The sound echoed mockingly around the empty room. He sat stock straight on the edge of the bed, his exhaustion forgotten. Tormund had gone utterly still and silent behind him—his hand had dropped from the wound in Jon’s shoulder to the small of his back.

“Pain?” Tormund softly asked, his tone unreadable.

“No,” came Jon’s strangled reply. He didn’t dare turn around.

“Right.” Tormund paused for long enough that Jon felt the first sour curl of shame form in his stomach. He was nearly ready to grab his clothes and make a break for the door when Tormund said, “Can I do it again?”

Jon spluttered and whirled around. “You—” he choked. “You can’t be serious.”

“But I am.” Tormund stared steadily back at him, expectant and faintly amused. By turning around Jon had unthinkingly left a mere hand’s breadth of space between their faces. It took hardly any movement at all for Tormund to slot their mouths together, knocking the wind from Jon’s lungs and any thoughts from his head.

The kiss lasted hardly a few seconds yet even as it ended and Tormund pulled away, Jon felt the phantom sensation of lips sliding over his own, the scratch of his friend’s beard against his cheek.

He stayed stuck inside the feeling for another long moment then shook his head and tried to return to himself. Tormund sat staring at him with that quiet hunter’s gaze—obviously waiting for something, though in his current stupor Jon couldn’t say what.

He half-expected to wake up, alone and half-hard in his bed. It would have hardly been the first time.

Yet the moment stretched on, filled only by Jon’s shaky breathing. In silence, he traced every inch of his friend’s face in search of pity or mockery. The former was unlikely, coming from Tormund, but the latter…

“You’re mocking me,” said Jon at last, suddenly certain of it.

“No.”

“You are. You always do.” Yet even as he said this, Jon felt himself be drawn closer, the press of Tormund’s hand on his back surer than gravity.

“Would you like me to mock you?” Tormund asked. “Tell you what your men say happens when I come into your stone tower at night? What they say I do to you?”

The thought hit Jon like a punch to the gut. He’d heard the rumors, of course: about the young and fair-faced King in the North and his burly Wildling companion, and the hours they’d spent unaccounted-for in Jon’s private solar. Only so much could be done to quell a rumor that salacious—or indeed, that plausible. Jon had certainly heard far worse—and more outlandish—gossip about himself.

He hadn’t let the whispers bother him. A little harmless insubordination among the men was good for morale. Still, he’d been careful not to listen in too closely when the conversation topic turned to Tormund, himself, and a door with iron locks.

Now, however, some new curiosity had awakened in him. Or, perhaps, an older curiosity he had not let himself recognize. Before he could consider his words too closely, Jon blurted out, “What would you do to me?”

Tormund paused and raised his brows, seeming as surprised with Jon’s boldness as Jon himself was. Not a moment later, though, he recovered, cupping Jon’s cheek in one palm and saying: “Anything you’d have me do.”

A red hot flush washed through Jon’s face, down his neck. He shouldn’t have enough blood in his body to feel so lightheaded, he thought deliriously, yet the impatient twitching of his cock said otherwise. Tormund’s eyes darkened in response and the thought that his friend could feel the movement of Jon’s cock inside his pants proved the breaking point for all his prodigious restraint.

“Kiss me.” The words emerged as half-question, half-prayer. Nearly soundless even in the quiet of his bedroom. Yet somehow, perhaps by the gods’ graces, Tormund heard him.

He leaned in slowly, giving Jon ample opportunity to shove him away and perhaps, on any other occasion, Jon would have. He would have denied desire and fled, babbling about honor and doing the right thing. He may have even believed it. Since boyhood, he’d put such faith in doing the right thing, the proper thing, with hopes that an honorable life might redeem the dishonor of his birth.

Yet he now knew his birth to be a lie—an honorable lie, perhaps, but a lie just the same. Of what value was his valor now? What good was the honor of a dead man, and a fool besides? All that truth and honor had brought him was death, and blood enough to steep his tarnished soul in.

But tonight—oh, tonight he was alive, or near enough. Tormund’s hands and mouth were warm against his skin, and Jon was so very tired of saying no.

He shut his eyes. For a moment, he didn’t move and merely let himself be kissed, melting into the contact. Tormund’s kisses were careful and his touches tentative, still expecting Jon to pull away.

That wouldn’t do, decided Jon. He parted his lips and pressed closer, the bed creaking as he leaned all his weight forward towards his friend. His hands settled atop Tormund’s thighs.

Tormund needed no more encouragement—heretofore unnoticed tension dropped from his shoulders and his touches grew firmer, more sure. The gentle kiss ripened into something far stronger and sweeter as his tongue traced the seam of Jon’s lips, then swirled into his mouth. His hand on Jon’s cheek migrated to the back of Jon’s head, fingers tangling in his hair and pulling hard enough to hurt anyone else.

Jon jumped as an icy draught swept under the chamber door and across his exposed back. “Cold?” muttered Tormund, sweeping a hand up Jon’s spine. Jon nodded and felt another shiver race through him, from the contact rather than the cold. Tormund tsked, a smirk pulling at his mouth. “Poor little crow. Too long in the South has turned you soft.” He ran his fingers through the downy hair at the nape of Jon’s neck, as though to illustrate his point.

 “Someone ought to warm me up, then.”

“Someone, he says.” Tormund’s laugh rumbled through Jon’s chest, filling him up. “No one here but you and me, Pretty Crow.”

He grinned against his friend’s mouth, giddy with the warmth of pretty crow filling him up. “S’pose you’ll have to do, then.”

Jon yelped as the hand on his back pulled him forward and brought him squarely into Tormund’s lap, straddling him with one knee planted on the bed to either side of his hips. Their chests collided, Jon’s bare skin against the front of Tormund’s cloak.

He jumped at the scrape of coarse leather over his nipples, the cold brand of Tormund’s belt buckle on his stomach. They were too close to kiss now so he nuzzled into the fur of Tormund’s collar and breathed in the smell of sweat and smoke. He felt drunk on it, his head spinning. Tormund’s arm snaked around his waist and pulled him even closer, as close as it was possible to be without one of them going inside the other.

That part comes later, Jon thought, then smothered a hysterical laugh in Tormund’s shoulder.

Tormund seemed to come to a similar conclusion—the hand at Jon’s waist reached around to the wound at his ribs and rested over it. A fingertip traced around the wound’s edge and Jon shuddered. He felt as helplessly over-sensitive as a green boy, his skin stretched taut like a bowstring poised to snap.

He nearly leapt out of his seat when Tormund’s other hand left his hair and cupped the front of his drawers where a wet spot was already growing, to Jon’s distant chagrin. Slowly but with none of his earlier demurral, Tormund stroked along his clothed length.

He choked and buried a moan in Tormund’s collar. The soft scratch of wool against him was both perfect and not enough, maddening and entirely too much. He realized at once that if he came before Tormund had even touched him properly, he’d never forgive either one of them.

“Tormund,” he said—not quite begging but not far from it, either.

Tormund relented, “Shh, you’re alright.” He unlaced the front of Jon’s drawers and delved his hand within. In the same moment, the finger that had been teasing at Jon’s wound pushed inside.

He moaned and bucked his hips forward, then the rest of his body backward, chasing both foci of sensation at once. Tormund appeared equally wrecked, from what little of his face Jon could see. His eyes roamed hungrily over Jon’s flushed chest. With a low groan, he let his forehead fall forward against Jon’s.

The hand on Jon’s cock wrapped around the base and held on tightly, past the point of pain were Jon a mortal man. Cold air against his cock as it was fished from his drawers made his spread legs flinch closed, nearly smashing Tormund’s hand between his thighs.

He gasped a curse but Tormund only shushed him again and pulled his drawers farther down his thighs, trapping them halfway open. Had someone walked in just then, they might have almost believed Jon was knelt in prayer on Tormund’s lap. His knees must have been digging uncomfortably into the tops of Tormund’s thighs but his friend made no complaints, only reaching between them to explore newly exposed skin.

His cock nearly vanished from sight inside Tormund’s massive hand, only the pink head poking out as Tormund gripped Jon’s length and pulled, one firm up-and-down stroke. Jon moaned his name again, enthralled by the novelty of feeling so small.

Jon had never been a large man—his height was a chief topic of teasing from Tormund, who never failed to remind Jon of his smaller stature at any opportunity. He had born the jests in good spirits yet he’d never been grateful for his size until now, nestled as he was in his friend’s arms. To be held so surely and so entirely was not an experience he thought he’d have as a man grown. Was this how so many women felt, he mused, when their loves embraced them? If so, it was a miracle that anyone ever left their beds; were it up to Jon, he might never leave his friend’s embrace again.

Then Tormund’s hands on his cock and inside his shoulder moved in tandem and all thoughts of stillness fled his mind. Fingers probed against naked bone, curling between his rib, fondling the sharp point of his shoulder blade, and Jon bucked and writhed against Tormund's chest.

Once, as a boy, he'd witnessed a shrike spear a mouse onto a hawthorn twig, the mouse's small legs wheeling in the air as its lifeblood dribbled into the snowbank below. Jon recalled wondering at this ritual: the shivering mouse, the shrike's doll-eyed apathy, the dark blood steaming on the snow. The simple, seductive violence of it.

As he shivered in Tormund's lap, pinned by the two fingers in his flayed back, he thought perhaps he understood it, now.

Jon flailed a hand up to Tormund’s hair and held on for dear life, his other hand gripping the front of Tormund’s coat when Tormund's mouth dropped to his neck and bit down hard on the tendon there. He wanted, suddenly and desperately, to tear away the cloak and any other layers underneath until he reached warm, pale skin.

He moved both hands to Tormund’s belt, pawed at the buckle until it came loose, then delved underneath, possessed by the thought of Tormund’s bare skin against his own. “Let me touch you,” he pleaded, barely conscious of what he was saying. “Let me. I need it, need to feel you—”

Tormund made more soothing noises into Jon’s neck—“Shh, I know, s’okay, I know—” and he sat up straight, giving Jon enough room to undo his belt and push his cloak aside. Jon pawed through leathers and sheepskins, rucking up layers upon layers of tunics, until at last, his hands touched skin. He nearly cried out from the fierce joy of it. His fingers carded through the coarse hair on Tormund’s chest, tracing the thick line of it down along his belly, clawing at his sides.

In another life, before he’d sworn himself to the Watch, Jon had known a woman’s touch. She’d been a whore from the winter town, paid for by a laughing Robb. He and Theon had hauled Jon out of the Keep to celebrate his first tourney win with a night of well-earned debauchery. The memory of her—her clever hands, the heady taste of her cunt, the warm weight of her thighs—had kept him company through many a long night on the Wall. He had never learned her name.

As Tormund bit more bruises into his neck and swept a thumb over the head of his cock, Jon knew that those pale memories could never comfort him again. Something akin to anger burst open inside his chest, a flame sweeping under his skin. How had he not known that it—that he—could be like this? Why had no one ever told him? How could he possibly return to normal life, now that he knew this feeling?

His heart raged at the injustice and he gripped hard at Tormund’s hips, dug his fingers in, willed tender flesh to bruise. He was on fire, consumed by the scrape of skin, the glide of his fingers through wet, open muscle, the heat of his body, his mouth, all of it. Everything.

Nothing compared—he was certain that nothing could ever compare.

Then Tormund’s hand that had been buried in Jon’s shoulder moved down his spine and dipped between his legs, and Jon realized at once that he’d been wrong.

He threw himself forward into Tormund’s lap, arms clasped tight around his waist, muffling curses and moans in his furred collar. His momentum made the bed sway and groan, the forgotten bowl of bloody water sloshing onto the bedsheets. “Fuck! Tormund, you—oh—”

Two fingers, slick with Jon’s own blood, traced wandering circles around the rim of Jon’s hole. “There now, my little crow,” he purred, muttering nonsense into Jon’s ear. His other hand lazily stroked Jon’s cock, stopping each stroke just below the head. A pool of static buzzed inside Jon’s belly. He shuddered and smashed his face into Tormund’s shoulder to muffle a whine as the hand on his cock trailed further down, over his balls.

Although there were too many layers of fur and cloth between them for Jon to feel Tormund’s cock, now that he was sat more fully in Tormund’s lap, their chests pressed flush together, he had leverage enough to grind down. He was rewarded with a low groan, the hand on his balls squeezing nearly to the point of pain.

“Cheeky,” chided Tormund. The circles over his rim took on a maddening rhythm, too slow and irregular for him move in time with. His cock gives a violent twitch, the head slick and shiny in Tormund’s hand.

“Gods, please, please.”

“What is it, hm?” One fingertip pressed teasingly inside. “What do you want, pretty thing?” he asked, his growling voice softer than Jon had ever heard it.

Tears blurred the corners of his vision. Fuck, he wanted too much. He wanted Tormund to crack him open and crawl inside. He wanted to come. “Want you,” he managed, words slurred. “Want you t’have me. To, to keep me.”

A wounded sound, like Tormund had been punched, before the hand on his cock gripped him hard and stroked him fast and sure. The fingers at Jon’s ass pressed inward, stretching him. A hot line of blood flowed freely down his back as his shoulder pulsed with a second heartbeat, a third taking up residence behind his balls.

Tormund’s fingers pushed deeper, rougher, stroked him inside and out. The pleasure was so intense that Jon wished helplessly for pain to ground him, yet it wouldn’t come.

He was unmoored, drifting somewhere far above himself.

Lost.

Tormund ground his hips up against Jon’s ass, groaning in his ear. A swipe of a calloused thumb over Jon’s cock-head and he was coming, spilling over his thighs and Tormund’s wrist as Tormund murmured to him: “That’s it. It’s alright, come on. Come on.” Jon gasped, breathless, his entire body pulsing as Tormund’s rough hands tore him apart.

By the time the pounding in his head receded, Jon was lying on his side. Whether Tormund had moved him or he had toppled over of his own accord was unclear until he registered the weight of the blankets draped across his chest. The fire on the hearth looked freshly stoked, the flames chewing at an unburnt log. On the floor beside the hearth sat the bowl of water, a pink rag swimming inside, and the tankard filled with bits of stone, tacky with blood, nearly dry.

He frowned across the empty expanse of the bed. Some small, plaintive sound must have escaped him because no sooner had he blinked awake than Tormund shuffled into view. He was dressed down to his underclothes: loose hose of a soft leather and a plain, felted tunic that just brushed his knees. Jon’s eyes caught on his freckled shoulders. A pink, ropey scar etched along the curve of one bicep. Jon wondered where it came from—what story Tormund might tell him, if he asked.

Tormund smiled down at him, the firelight falling over one side of his face, alighting on the mocking glint in his one visible eye. “Did you enjoy your nap, Little Crow?” Despite his state of undress, he struck Jon as oddly guarded, standing stiff and straight beside the hearth with his arms crossed. Here was the leader of the Free Folk, the Wildling King, fierce and unpredictable.

Had he any energy left at all, Jon would have scrambled out of bed to kneel and swear his fealty, preferably by means that demanded little speech and fewer clothes. As it was, he was too exhausted even to baulk at his own impulses, or at the hot pulse in his gut when Tormund’s forearms flexed over his chest.

“Why’re you all the way over there?” Jon muttered. “Com’ere.” He tried to reach out and succeeded only in flopping his arm across the bed in Tormund’s direction. His arm’s momentum rolled Jon forward, part-way onto his face, and he winced into his pillow as the movement peeled his bloody shoulder away from where it’d glued to the sheets.

Tension dropped from Tormund’s shoulders and the half of his face that Jon could see creased into something terribly soft. He dove into bed, shaking both the mattress and Jon, who groaned as the impact jostled his wounded shoulder. The skin there felt oddly malleable, loose like worked leather. It would need stitching up, that was for certain, but Jon was content to leave such worries to his future self. He was content in a great many ways, right now.

The pair of them lay face-to-face in the center of the bed, sharing one pillow, their knees knocking under the warm blankets. Jon’s outstretched arm was tucked under Tormund’s head while one of Tormund’s hands settled over Jon’s hip, his thumb stroking lazily over the bone there. His other arm splayed between them, palm-up, elbow bent.

Jon grasped this hand in his own, palms pressed together. Driven by some sleepy impulse, he brought their joined hands to his face and kissed Tormund’s knuckles, mouthing over the scars there. Tormund extended his first two fingers, testing, and without pause Jon took them into his mouth, humming at the comforting weight on his tongue. Although Tormund had cleaned his hands while Jon was asleep, the tang of Jon's blood still lingered on his skin.

“You are so strange,” said Tormund. He curled his fingers downward to trace Jon’s teeth. “What gods gave you to me, hm? Such a strange, sweet thing. Beautiful.” He spoke in a low rumble, words half sounds and half vibrations through their shared pillow. His accent stretched taut over each successive sound: sw-eet thing. Beau-ti-ful. The awe in his voice melted over Jon like spring thaw and he grinned around Tormund’s fingers, nuzzling against his knuckles, beyond shame.

Aimlessly, they touched one another, exchanging lazy kisses whenever the urge moved them—which it did, and often. Jon felt greedy for such easy affection, starved for it. The scene should have seemed unreal—it certainly would have, even a few hours prior—yet Jon felt more real inside Tormund’s sound embrace than he had in months, maybe years. His life outside of this bed had been a dream, cold and immaterial, but he was awake now.

“Thank you,” said Jon.

Tormund hummed, questioning, eyes closed. “For?” His eyelashes, so blond as to be almost invisible, cast delicate shadows over his cheeks. A faint scar trailed down the flat line of his jaw, into his beard.

Jon shook his head. “Just thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Tormund huffed, his hand tracing a lazy circle onto Jon’s lower back. His eyes opened and fixed on Jon with an amused gleam. “Think of what your men will say to their pretty king looking so well-fucked.”

“‘M not a king anymore.”

“Tell that to your men.”

“Bugger the men.”

“Don’t,” said Tormund, “I’ll be jealous.”

Jon snorted into the pillow. “Best keep me ‘well-fucked’, then, so you don’t have to be.”

“Oh, I’m going to keep you. ” Black eyes, ringed thinly with blue, bored into Jon, who could do nothing else but roll closer, kiss his mouth and smear new bruises into his neck.

“Let them talk,” Jon told the crook of Tormund’s shoulder. “The truth is no worse than what they already say.”

“You don’t know what they say.”

He pulled away just enough to meet his friend’s stare. “Tell me, then.”

Tormund smiled and a thousand tiny creases shattered outward from the corners of his eyes. He was so close now that Jon could have counted them all.

“They say,” he said with a sardonic twist to his mouth, “That King Snow lost the taste for cunt somewhere beyond the Wall.” As Tormund spoke, the hand on Jon’s back crept around to his side, Tormund’s arm encircling his waist. “They say these days he prefers something a bit… stronger.”

On ‘stronger,’ Tormund hauled him closer with one hard yank about his waist. They crashed together from chest to hips, legs tangling under the blankets. Jon’s laugh was almost a moan—could easily be a moan, with a little more encouragement. They would get to that in time, Jon was certain. There was time enough for all of it, now.

“Shows what they know, then,” he sighed, mock-disappointed. “I haven’t.”

Tormund’s eyebrows raised. “You haven’t?”

“Lost my taste for cunt.” He leaned in, mouth twitching at the corners, until their lips just grazed each other. “You’re the biggest cunt I know.”

Tormund’s booming laugh, made louder by the lateness of the hour and the echoes of Jon’s stone-walled solar, was swiftly swallowed up by another kiss.