Page 27 of The Elves and the Shoemaker (The GriMM Tales #4)

Twenty

Elias

E

lias’ eyelids felt like they were made of iron when he tried to open his eyes.

Where am I?

Squinting, he was able to register that the room he was in was the cabin in the meadow, although he couldn’t recall how he’d got back there.

He turned his head and groaned, the movement sending a pulsating pain through his head.

“Johan! Johan!! He’s waking up,” Henrik shouted at such a volume that Elias might have shoved his hand down his throat and pulled out his voice box if he’d had the strength.

The banging of a door followed by heavy footsteps only added to Elias’ torment, although at least unless something drastic had changed, Johan was unlikely to begin shouting.

“Can you hear me? Are you okay?” Henrik asked.

Elias groaned. “A corpse in a graveyard could hear you, must you be so loud?”

“We have been worried sick about you! You stubborn, pig-headed—”

“Shhh,” Johan interrupted what Elias suspected was going to be a rather lengthy tirade judging by Henrik’s tone. “Can you try to eat something?” he asked.

Elias felt quite sick, although that could have been due to a lack of food, so he nodded. “I’ll try. Rik, can you yell at me tomorrow? My head really hurts,” he requested, sounding as pathetic as he felt.

“You scared me,” Henrik whispered, and guilt churned in Elias’ stomach.

He didn’t reply but he reached out and found Henrik’s hand, squeezing his fingers. Bracing himself, he turned his head the other way, searching for Johan with his gaze.

Johan’s eyes were bloodshot and his hair dishevelled. Elias tried to swallow past the lump of emotion, but his throat was so dry and painful that he winced.

“Sit up and sip this,” Johan requested softly. He held out a skin of water and helped Elias to raise his head enough to drink from it.

The cool water was a balm, and Elias tried to drink more, but Johan pulled it away.

“Start slow, let it settle.”

Elias knew Johan was right, but he was suddenly so thirsty that he was sure he might die if he didn’t drink immediately. When he tried to grab for the water skin, though, he got a stern enough look from Johan that he snatched his hand back.

For the following few hours, Elias alternated between sleeping, having small bites of food, and taking regular sips of water until, eventually, when he woke up, his head had settled to a less debilitating level of pain.

Next to him on the bed, Johan was reading a book, while in the corner of the room, Rik appeared to be mending a hole in a pair of Johan’s breeches.

Elias steeled himself before sitting up fully and giving his head a moment to adjust. It was raining outside and gusts of wind rattled the window, but he was quite warm wrapped up in a nest of blankets.

Johan put his book down. “Need anything?”

“I… erm… need to relieve myself. Quite urgently.”

Johan chuckled softly before helping Elias get to his feet. His legs wobbled, so Johan assisted him in getting around to the side of the cabin where the roof extended and provided a little shelter from the rain.

Elias’ hands shook as he tried to undo the strings of his breeches.

“Can I help?”

Elias blushed but nodded. Johan deftly undid the knot and tugged them down until it freed Elias’ cock. Johan held his soft member and aimed it away from their feet.

“Unghh,” Elias moaned in relief as he emptied his bladder. It felt too good to be truly embarrassed that Johan was having to help him so intimately. When he was finished, Johan tucked him away and did up his breeches before helping him back inside.

Next to the bed, Henrik had left out a bucket of fresh water and a cloth, but Elias didn’t have the strength to wash himself right then, despite how desperately he wished to be clean.

Johan must have registered the conflict in his expression because he wordlessly helped Elias remove his clothes and dipped the cloth in the water.

The wet cloth was warm, and Elias was grateful because Rik must have used magic to make it so. Elias was so depleted that he feared magic might never return to him.

It had all been worth it, though, he told himself.

Johan ran the warm water all over his skin, and Elias hummed happily at the sensation.

“Turn over,” Johan asked.

Elias did so and Johan continued on, washing Elias’ back and buttocks in a very perfunctory way that told Elias it was the most he was going to get from the larger man for a while.

“Are you angry with me?” Elias asked quietly.

Johan sighed. “Yes.”

Elias nodded, expecting as much and understanding. The difficulty he was facing was that he couldn’t truly apologise because he’d really set his mind on not regretting his decision.

“For the shop?” he checked, making sure he understood, since Johan struggled to elaborate.

Johan frowned. “No.”

Elias kind of wished that Johan had been angry about the shop because it seemed like a more black and white thing to make amends for.

“For using magic on you, then?”

“Partly,” he said before chucking the washcloth back in the bucket and helping Elias change into fresh clothes. “You don’t trust me.”

The words were like a gut punch to Elias. “I d—”

“Stop. P-please don’t lie to me.”

Elias looked to Henrik like the man might save him, but he shook his head in a clear You’re on your own with this one.

“So, this is what it will be like now, then, you two ganging up on me?” Elias folded his arms over his chest defiantly and scowled.

Henrik huffed before putting down his sewing, walking over to Elias and straddling his legs. Elias just pursed his lips and refused to acknowledge him until Henrik gripped each side of his face, forcing him to make eye contact.

“Two things can be true at once. You did what you felt you needed to do. And you betrayed Johan. That is for the two of you to figure out. I know these two things to be true, and I am not picking a side. Just don’t be so stubborn that you make it worse instead of better.

Johan is not like us, his heart is soft and his bruises last longer. ”

Henrik kissed Elias lightly on the lips, but he couldn’t enjoy it. Henrik’s words had flayed him open, leaving him exposed and vulnerable in a way that left his brain screaming at him to run and hide, but he had nowhere to go. Nowhere to run to. Elias suddenly felt quite sick.

He wasn’t crying. Not really. Just a little sniffle.

Johan passed him the water skin, and Elias was grateful just to have something to do with his hands. He trembled as he lifted it to his lips, but they were kind enough not to acknowledge it.

Elias should have been glad that the two of them appeared to be putting a pin in the matter of his transgressions, but it just made his skin itch.

He wanted to know what the consequences were.

Need to know where he stood with them both, individually and together.

The not knowing ate at him for most of the day.

Later that night, and despite a bone-deep exhaustion, Elias remained wide awake. Henrik slept in the middle, and Elias felt the gap of an ice-cold fjord between him and Johan.

This relationship the three of them were building was the most precious yet fragile thing that Elias had ever had, and he could feel it crumbling under his hands.

Fear clawed up through his stomach and had a vise grip around his throat at the thought of losing the only good thing he’d ever had. Elias’ heart pounded as he clambered over Henrik and climbed on top of Johan.

“Johan, are you awake?” he whispered.

“Hmm?”

Elias tugged the blanket down and tried to reach into Johan’s pyjama bottoms, but a large hand gripped his wrist and stopped him.

“What are you doing?” Johan rasped.

“Can I… use my mouth on you?” Elias knew he sounded desperate, but he felt desperate and this was the only way he knew how to get someone to be close to him, and wasn’t that bleak.

Johan shook his head, and Elias almost threw up before he tried to scramble away.

Johan didn’t let him. “Come here.”

Large arms tugged Elias down until his head was resting on a warm, wide chest. Johan wrapped Elias up tightly in his embrace and locked a leg around one of Elias’, keeping him firmly held flush against Johan’s body.

Elias cried. He cried because he was embarrassed, and he cried because this was what he’d wanted and yet he’d tried to use sex to get it.

He cried because when he’d woken, he’d been so sure that he had no regrets about what he’d done, and now he was worried that he didn’t know anything for sure at all.

What if I can’t fix the mess I have made?