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pomegranates-and-blood · 4 years ago

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Lips of an Angel

My Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Danish!Reader, Ivar/Freydis, Reader/OC

Summary: “Well, I had this idea of Ivar x reader based off the song Lips of an Angel. (If you feel like a Modern AU works best that's fine) Where Ivar is with Freydis, but Ivar never let go of his feelings for the reader and she never let go of hers, and you can decide how you want it to end.”

Word Count: 3.2k

Warnings: Angst, lost love, implied sex/cheating, mention of polygamy

A/N: This is the closest I’ll get I’ve gotten to writting 5b Ivar, and it still is ooc probably. I feel like a horrible writer for ignoring canon like this, but istg that season almost made me give up on Vikings altogether and I just can’t write it, or any of the characters as they were then.

Anyhow, hope you like this, I was on the fence about making it a modern!au or not, so I decided to write both a Viking times version and a Modern version. Different story completely, of course.

You can find the Modern!AU version of this request right here

Kattegat is still the same, you realize, it is as if Aslaug still sits on that throne.

In a way, you think she still does.

Álfarr’s hand is a comfortable weight on your back, and his warmth helps you thaw from the cold of memories and regret that took a hold of you the moment you crossed those walls.

“You cannot leave me!” His voice is an enraged snarl, his hand is gripping tight at the axe on the table.

You know it is madness to turn your back on Ivar the Boneless, you know it is madness to ignore the rage in his eyes. Still, you walk out of that worn-down church, and surprisingly, you survive.

And because the man you are travelling with, the man that claims to love you and to know you love him too, is too smart for his own good, he notices the way you wish for nothing more than to leave this place you just returned to.

And so he tries reminding you of what you have returned for, of the life you will be able to have once you spend one winter in Kattegat.

“I was thinking, after this, we could travel to Ribe,” Álfarr offers casually, glancing at you from the corner of his eye, “The Danes are sure to welcome you back.”

“Hmm,” You reply, nodding your head, and because he deserves it, because you can’t forget what made you left Kattegat or what has made you return, you offer a smile, “I don’t know if they would welcome you, though.”

“I fought against Angantyr once,” He reminds you with a chuckle. After a moment, he brings you close and presses a kiss to the side of your head, “Besides, more than a year ago I was convinced-…”

“Convinced? You make it sound as if-…”

“I was convinced by a beautiful Danish woman to leave those wars behind,” Álfarr continues with a knowing smile, ignoring your glare of protest. “And I don’t regret it.”

“Well let’s hope she doesn’t regret this, eh?” You try around a deep breath, a smile that feels fake.

One winter. Only one winter in Kattegat, and then Álfarr will be at your side wherever the Gods will take you. Such was the pledge he made, and the deal you agreed to.

____

Long before the night that now envelops you had settled, word had reached you that the King calls for you, and all you’ve been able to do since that thrall delivered the message was to consider the cost of running away, cowardly as it may be.

Reminiscent of those last weeks before he drove you away, before you left him behind.

“Ivar calls for you.” Hvitserk tells you with a sigh, taking a seat at your side with an exhaustion that is more than physical.

“What for? He listens only to his own voice lately.” You quip bitterly, but still stand up and with a soft touch of the Prince’s shoulder, you answer a call that hurts your pride, your hope.

Álfarr’s steps approaching you take you away from the dangerous lull of memories.

“Are you going to go?” He asks without preamble, taking a seat in front of you.

You sigh, “If the King calls for me-…”

Álfarr chuckles bitterly, interrupting you, “Ah, of course. The King summoning a Völva, nothing more. Surely not your ex-lover wanting to see you again.”

“Do you want me to say no? Not many survive denying Ivar.”

“You survived leaving him.”

“Yes. I left him,” You repeat pointedly, not intending to withstand foolish jealousy. But because what the years made out of you isn’t happy with the way he is soothed slightly at your reminder, you add, “I left him when he tried keeping me chained.”

And Álfarr was always a smart man, it was one of the reasons you first trusted him. So in response to the threat you don’t voice, he only shrugs, “You wouldn’t leave me.”

Your eyebrows raise at the unwavering certainty, “What makes you think that?”

“Nothing could make you wish to return to Kattegat until me,” Álfarr offers you a smile, that you almost start returning, “I still consider it a feat, to have been able to sway you.”

You drink down the last of your mead, tilting your head back and trying to chase away bitterness with the honeyed drink.

“You swayed me the moment I found you dying and chose to save you, you fool.” You quip, betraying a fond smile that he returns.

Without any more words, you stand up. Your hand traces the outline of his shoulders, strong and familiar, as you walk out the door.

____

Ivar waits for you sitting in what looks like an adjacent room to the throne room.

You wish you could say he looks the same, you wish you could say he still has the face, the eyes, of the man you once loved.

But his face is darkened by shadows and something more sinister than that, his eyes are colder and crueler than you ever had the misfortune of seeing them.

It still makes a pang of pain travel to your chest, to the place where your heart ought to be if you hadn’t carelessly given it away years ago, to see him before you, in the flesh, not a dream or a memory.

“My King.” You bow your head.

“Say my name,” Ivar orders gruffly, and at your startled expression when you lift your gaze to his, he amends, “We’ve-…Don’t act like we are strangers. Call me by my name.”

“Alright, Ivar,” You concede, the familiar sound of his name on your lips still managing to make your chest tighten. You take a seat in the chair across from him that was offered, and fold your hands over your lap to keep yourself from fidgeting. “Why did you call for me?”

“You arrive at a Kingdom and don’t dare visit the King, hm?” He taunts without missing a beat, “You used to have better manners.”

And you used to avoid playing these games with me, you think, but bite back the words.

“I needn’t bother any king with an announcement of my arrival,” You remind him, “I am no one of importance, of fame.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” A soft and dainty voice says, making a chill run down your spine even before you see the blonde approaching from the shadows. She offers a smile, but the eyes of the Queen of Kattegat are as cold as the King’s. “You’re the Völva that granted the Black Danes many victories, aren’t you?”

You watch, frozen in your place, as she approaches Ivar with ease, resting one delicate hand on his shoulder, standing by his side.

Trying to keep your eyes from following the movement of Ivar’s hand that goes to touch hers where it rests on his shoulder, you reply, “I have granted no man any victory.”

“The Gods did, but in no little thanks to your work, your magic. I have heard of you,” She insists, and you frankly do not know what to do with her false warmth. Looking into her eyes feels like watching a flame from the other side of a glass window, an illusion, a façade. “And I am honored you’re here.”

You bow your head in acceptance, “Thank you, Queen Freydis.”

She betrays a wider smile, a more feral smile, and your blood runs cold.

“Ah, you know my name. You have heard of me too, then?”

You feel like you’re being ambushed, so instead of giving her an answer, you return your gaze to the King.

“Why was I summoned here?”

Ivar regards you in silence, eyes slightly narrowed and a cold cruelty in the slight curve of his smile.

Still, he gestures with his hand, dismissing his wife, ordering her to leave the two of you alone.

“Word is you aren’t here to stay.”

“Just for the winter.”

“A Völva, and one always close to the sons of Ragnar at that,” He lists, leaning forward in his seat, elbows resting on armored knees, “I could have use for you.”

You feel cold creeping over you, and lean back.

“Use?”

“It is a matter of time before Freydis becomes pregnant with my child,” Ivar comments with what to anyone else would look like nonchalance, but you hear the cruelty behind the words. “I could use a witch weaving her magic to protect my child and wife.”

It hurts, it hurts at a deep part of your chest, so much so you almost want to look down to see if there’s a gaping wound where your heart should be.

“There’s many that would be willing to do so, but not me.”

“Why not?”

“My home isn’t Kattegat.”

“Where is it, then? With that blacksmith?” He accuses without missing a beat. The anger in his tone, the accusation, the vitriol, the rage, it is all so familiar.

It is all you left behind, with reason to do so.

“I will put word that Kattegat is in search of a Völva to protect the King and his family,” You say around the foolish and hopeless knot of pain at your throat, “I’m sure someone will be of help.”

Standing up from your seat, you mutter a goodbye and turn your back to the King.

His voice, loud and enraged as he calls your name, makes all of this a familiar scene, and it makes you stop dead on your tracks.

“I didn’t give you permission to leave.” Ivar snarls at you, the sound of a crutch stabbing the ground as he stands up as well.

You take a deep breath, but don’t turn around.

“May I leave, then?”

“No,” He sentences, walking closer, “Not now, and not when winter is over.”

You gasp, “What?”

“I’m keeping you here in Kattegat,” Ivar states, intimidating, venomous, unfamiliar as he towers over you, “I’m King, I can do as I wish with you.”

“I am a free woman,” You remind him, “Only my blood would rule over me, and they are all dead. My blood or my husband, and you, Ivar, are neither.”

“You cannot command me!” You insist with a laugh, defiant even as you tilt your head to the side to let him continue his thorough exploration of your neck with his lips and tongue.

“Hm, you forget who leads the army you fight for, witch.” He teases, a breathed laugh against your neck when you pull on his hair, offended at the title

“No one but my family commands me, Ivar.”

“They are all dead.”

“Not all of them,” You quip, a foolish knot on your stomach tightening at the conversation you’re about to start, “Family isn’t just blood. One day I will be married, and my husband will be my family.”

“So, no one but your blood or your husband would dare rule over you,” He intones, pulling back and searching your eyes, “Why do I have the feeling it wouldn’t be so easy to make you surrender?”

“Because you have good judgement?” You offer with a tentative laugh.

Ivar only smiles, and leans down to capture your mouth in his. His kisses never fail to make your heart beat so fast you hear it in your head.

In the way his hands tighten over whatever part of you he has a hold of, in the way his tongue demands entrance to your mouth, in the way you feel the soft sounds he cannot keep trapped; you find yourself gone, enthralled, his.

When he pulls back, his eyes, darkened and burning, linger on your kiss-bitten lips for a few moments.

“With those lips of yours, love, it would be very easy to make any man surrender.” Ivar confesses in a hoarse whisper, and past the pang of heat his words and the way he’s looking at you send through you, you smile.

“My lips?” He hums an agreement, and in the few moments you have him enthralled, your smile turns devious, “Where?”

Ivar grits his teeth at the reminder, and the flash of pain you imagine seeing for a moment could make you believe he remembers the same moments you do, the same life you wish you could have lived till your last breath, the same world you wish you had never left behind.

“That blacksmith you came with.”

“He’s a warrior, and you know his name.” You tell him, aware you’re prodding a dangerous beast but still doing so with an arrogant tilt of your chin.

“Does he know about me?” Ivar asks, voice low and dangerous, “About us? About what you promised me?”

“Does she?” You ask, unable to keep the bitterness from your tone.

Ivar’s reply is immediate, “Yes.”

And with a simple word weighs on you the realization that either she means much more to him than you ever imagined, or you still do. You aren’t sure you want to know the answer.

“I have to go,” You tell him, stepping back and lowering your gaze to the dark wood under your feet. “Tell your brother I would love to see him. I’ve missed him.”

“You’ll just leave?”

“No, I will stay until winter passes. I-…”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean, and you know it,” He accuses, furious movements of his crutch as he approaches you again. “You’ll leave me again.”

The words tug at a pathetic and foolish part of your heart, a part of your heart that you never got back. A part of your heart that was left behind in some old church in York.

Still, you offer truth, a truth that lacerates at your throat on the way out, “I never returned to you, Ivar.”

His free hand grabs roughly at your arm, and his breathing is fast, his eyes are searching yours desperately.

The furious glint in his eye, the twinge of madness in his scowl, the phrase he would repeat over and over as if he could make it truth by will alone, “You will not leave me.”

“You are here, Fate brought you back to me.”

“Fate brought your wife to you,” You remind him, pain interwoven in your every word, “Fate brought Álfarr to my side. Fate pulled us apart, Ivar.”

But he shakes his head, stubborn and desperate. For a moment, in the way the snarl in his lips trembles, in the way he blinks quickly, you see the man you love.

“No.” Is all he says, before he brings you to him roughly, and claims your mouth.

You have been familiar with magic all your life, and you know it is something other than it, but it feels like magic when you let yourself give into his kiss. It feels like something stronger than magic when you find yourself giving in to Ivar, breaths quickened as you watch him answer the command of the gentle push of your hand and sit on the chair at his back.

Kissing him, it is anger, it is anger and lust and grief and love, you won’t deny it. It is biting and demanding and rough and him.

Getting lost in the feel, the smell, the taste, of him was always easy. Terrifyingly easy, once.

And so you lose yourself in the push and pull of your bodies moving as one, in the way he demands with bites and kisses and soft sounds breathed against your lips the surrender you refuse to give, in the way he lets you try and lure him to that same surrender with your lips on his skin and the intonation of his name on your lips that still makes him tremble.

His hands are rough and demanding as they grip your hips, and he makes you move above him with a punishing pace. And it feels like he is trying to punish you. For leaving him. For returning.

Your own hands grip onto his shoulders, nails digging into the skin and drawing blood, traying to dispel the touch of any other with each drop. So that there’s a bit of you left with him, a proof. Of how you once were his. Of how he’s still yours.

____

You lay in the quiet that lets you pretend you never left that world you once loved so much, in the peace that makes your chest ache for the unsaid vows you broke.

Ivar’s head rests against your chest, letting you every once in a while feel the drag of his mouth over your skin, lazily retracing a path he bit and kissed his way through earlier. Your fingers, aching to be once again familiar with the feel of his skin, the softness of his hair, travel wherever you can reach, ceaselessly.

It is as if in each breath shared, in each moan that trembled past parted lips, in each moment of ecstasy and of pain; the anger and the resentment and the hate gave way, let the world that once was take a hold of the moment you live -bask- in now.

The quiet is broken by a soft murmur of your name, and your chest pulls tight at the sound of it in Ivar’s voice, at the return of the fragile softness, the hidden gentleness, you once were the sole recipient of.

“I have…dreamt of you, these passing years,” He tells you, even a confession such as this traced by underlying anger. He presses yet another kiss to the skin above your heart, “I have missed you.”

“So have I, more…more than I could ever say.” You offer, closing your eyes to keep tears from filling your eyes.

“I don’t want you to leave me again.” Ivar whispers, voice so, so quiet.

You release a breath that shakes and trembles past your lips, “You and I are fated to say goodbye, I think. Always were.”

He lifts his head, strikingly blue eyes meeting yours.

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“You have a wife, Ivar, I can’t-…”

“You can be my wife too,” He offers, making your heart both soar and break. “You wouldn’t be queen, but you never minded for pow-…”

“Ivar,” You interrupt, voice shaking, “Listen to what you’re saying. You’re asking me to be your second wife. To take Freydis as my sister-wife.”

“She won’t object,” He says it with such certainty that it sickens you, and you scramble to stand, to part from his embrace. “She’d do anything I asked her to. She will accept.”

You are shaking your head, putting the shield your dress serves as back up over your skin.

“I could never accept,” You tell him, and because you want to linger for a moment longer in the sun, in the brief paradise where you’re allowed to see the real him shining in his blue eyes; you walk closer one last time and let your fingers trace the side of his face lovingly, smiling even if it is a goodbye, “No woman that loves you would settle for half of you.”

Whether you speak of her and her faults, or you and your hopeless heart; you don’t know.

____ ____ ____

Hope you liked this! Thank you so much for reading!!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @xbellaxcarolinax @1950schick @ietss @peachyboneless @encounterthepast @maggiescarborough @chibisgotovalhalla @fae-sedai

#ivar x reader #ivar the boneless x reader #ivar the boneless imagine #ivar the boneless #ivar

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