Title: In Any Way, In Every Way
Author: Tinnean
Disclaimer: This belongs to Will Shakespeare, with thanks to Kenneth Branagh for making it into a fantastic movie!
Summary: Don John, bastard brother of Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon, will avenge himself on his brother in any way he can, and comes upon a particularly enjoyable way of doing so.
Notes: This takes place before the start of the play/movie, after the battle, but before the men have returned to Leonato's house in Messina. Stephano appears in The Tempest as a drunken butler, and in The Merchant of Venice, as a servant to Portia. Since Claudio had no servant, Stephano was drafted. Beta by Gail.
'If I cross him any way, I bless myself every way.' Don John, Much Ado About Nothing, Act I Scene III
In Any Way, In Every Way Part 1/1
"My lord."
Don John looked up at me, exhaustion scored deeply in his handsome face. "What word?"
"Our losses are few, and none of any name." The battle that had been joined at dawn's light was done, and the victory had gone to Don Pedro.
"Of course. The prince would have it no other way." His lush mouth was twisted in an expression of dissatisfaction. It was well known that there was no love lost between the bastard and his brother, Don Pedro.
"Good my lord, art measurable sad. Let me..."
"Conrade, there is naught you can do for me."
"I am ever at your service, lord."
His dark eyes became hooded. "Are you, sirrah?" He stroked his palm over the erection shielded by his codpiece. "Are you indeed?"
I bowed my head and licked my lips, ready to drop to my knees before him if that was his will. My fingertips itched to unlace his breeches and expose the heated flesh of his cock.
Hard fingers gripped my jaw and forced my head up. "I would have the Count's man, the most exquisite Claudio."
I bared my teeth in a wolf's grin. "Aye, my lord." I turned to do his bidding.
"Conrade."
I paused at the opening of his tent. "My lord?"
"I'll want him... compliant."
I bowed my head again. "As you wish."
I found a skin of wine and sipped deeply, then added to it a powder that would leave the drinker mad with lust.
The prince's tent was crowded with his gentlemen, most notable among them the young lords, Claudio and Benedick, current favorites of Don Pedro. Their goblets were never empty, although their hands were unsteady and more oft was wine spilled onto the rug beneath their feet. A waste of a good vintage, I thought to myself.
"A song!" Benedick demanded. "To make our hearts merry!"
The prince's fool began to sing. "'Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more. Men were deceivers ever...'"
Benedick whispered something in Count Claudio's ear. The younger man gave a shout of laughter and clouted his friend's shoulder, then staggered to his feet. A pretty-faced youth, I could see why my lord desired him. "I'll no more of you, signior Benedick!" He faced his prince on legs that threatened to tangle one with the other. "My lord, with your permission I'll retire."
Don Pedro looked upon his favorite with an indulgent air. "Aye, good Claudio. The morrow will come soon enough, and then we'll away to Leonato's house in Messina. Methinks there is a lady there who would be well-pleased to see you safe returned."
He blushed and laughed and hunched a shoulder. "My lord, the lady is well enough..."
"But she is too sharp-tongued!" Benedick interrupted. "If, in faith, it is the lady Beatrice you mean."
"No, my friend, that lady is for you! I speak of her cousin, the fair Hero." Don Pedro found favor with that match? My lord should know of this.
"She is too short!"
"There is no pleasing you, sirrah! Nay," Claudio, with another laugh, held up his hand. "I'll not meet with you in a skirmish of wits, Benedick. I'm to bed!"
Aye, but not his own. The fires were dying down, and I followed him in the darkness. There was such revelry in the camp that none saw me, or if they did, paid me any note.
"Count Claudio," I called softly. "Some wine, my lord?"
His senses were too befuddled by drink to recognize the danger I posed, although he did recognize me. "How now, Conrade?" He accepted the wine skin and took a taste. "Ah, this is passing excellent!" And he swallowed the remainder greedily. "I give thee thanks, sir."
"Count, you are turned around. Come, I'll help you to your tent." I took his arm in a companionable hold and led him across the camp. After no more that three steps, I could feel the heat begin to roll off his body. He nuzzled my ear, and his hand strayed to the bulge at the front of my breeches. His cock was hard against my hip.
I threw back the flap to my true lord's tent, and the young gentleman entered, tugging me after. "Lie with me!" He did not see that the tent was occupied, and was confused when I started to back out.
"Conrade. Stay." The light in the tent was dim, the candles almost burned down, but it was bright enough for me to see my lord stripped to his hose and garters. His cock was hard against his belly, and my mouth watered, remembering the taste of his essence as he poured himself down my throat.
"If that is your wish, my lord."
The young count staggered and flung himself down on the edge of the cot. "Stephano!" he shouted for his man. "Where are you, dolt?" He began to chortle drunkenly. "I cannot find my feet to remove my boots!"
"I will do that for you, sir." I straddled his thigh and tugged on his boot. He leaned forward and caressed the curve of my arse, probing the crevice between my cheeks, and I dared to rub myself against the firm thigh between my legs.
"Would you like a go at him, Conrade?" Don John's breath was hot in my ear.
"If it pleases my lord."
"Perhaps. Finish stripping him."
I did as my lord bid me. Count Claudio had fallen back on the cot, singing off-key. "'Then sigh not so, but let them go, and be you blithe and bonny...'" It took some doing to wrestle him out of his clothes, but soon he was sprawled naked before our appreciative eyes.
"No wonder why my brother has oft proclaimed his love of him," Don John sneered as he stroked an unguent on his cock, pulling back on the foreskin and toying with the broad, flushed crown. "Turn him on his belly, Conrade, and see that his legs are well spread."
I positioned Claudio's legs on either side of the cot and parted his cheeks for my lord to take possession of him. Don John set his cock at the young count's hole, and began to press forward with a steadfast motion. The body beneath his bucked. In spite of being enslaved by the potion in the wine, Claudio whined in discomfort and tried to move away from the intruder that was stretching his back passage.
"So hot. So tight! What think you, Conrade! I do believe this gentleman of Florence has never been had thusly. I marvel that my brother, the prince, is so honorable!" he mocked.
When first I had come to Don John, a beardless youth, it had been not more than a sennight before he'd found use for both my arse and my mouth.
"Conrade, if he seeks to cry out, stop his mouth."
I undid my breeches and took my cock in hand. I was not about to wait on the off chance he did; I seized the count's head and turned it toward me, the action smearing my essence across his cheek and over his lips. He breathed in my scent, and his mouth opened on a gasp. My cock slid easily in, and he suckled me as eagerly as a babe his dam's tit. I began to rock my hips in time to my lord's thrusts.
"Stop!" Don John ordered me abruptly, and I obeyed him. "Take my place." He pulled out of the young count, as did I, and stepped back.
I knelt on the cot and raised Claudio's hips, then entered him, pleased to find he was slick from my lord's penetration of him. My breeches were pulled lower and I felt an unguent-covered finger sliding into me, preparing me as my lord had not taken the time to prepare his brother's man. Two more followed it, curving, finding that spot within me that drove me to madness. I bit down on Claudio's shoulder to muffle my cries.
Don John's cock replaced his fingers. He reached around my hip with one hand and touched the spot where my cock disappeared into the younger man. His other hand placed mine on Claudio's hard flesh, for in spite of the count's newness to this game, he was well pleased with it, and I worked his cock with fingers that had long since learned the way of it. I found that spot in Claudio, and he mewled in surprised delight. I covered his mouth with my palm, and shivered as his tongue came out to lick the calloused skin.
I burned at the cock that measured its length in me, vigorously plowing my arse. Warm lips caressed the back of my neck. Teeth sank deeply into the flesh, breaking the skin, and my lord groaned as he flooded my bowels with his seed.
"Finish him."
I drove in, deep and hard and merciless, and Count Claudio writhed beneath me, spitted on my cock, moaning, mindless. I growled as I exploded within him. The heat of my seed soothed his abused passage, and a final thrust against his sweet spot, a final squeeze of my hand saw him spilling himself into my fingers.
Claudio was insensible. At my back, Don John petted my flank. "Well done, Conrade." He touched the back of my neck where his bite burned, like a brand, hidden by my hair. "I would have my mark on my brother's creature."
"'Twould not be safe, my lord. You would bring his ire down upon your head."
"Your words ring true, Conrade, though I would fain be a canker in my brother's hedge than a rose in his garden! Ah, well." He eased out of me, and his seed oozed out, tickling the skin behind my balls. "Clean him off and return him to his tent."
"Aye, my lord." A bowl of water had been heated, but it was fast cooling, and I saw first to my lord, then myself, and then the county's man. There was a little blood, and I pressed the dampened cloth to him. Once I righted my own clothes, I had a care to Claudio's and put his feet into his boots.
The effect of the potion in his wine was wearing off, but the effect of the wine itself till held him in thrall. My shoulder under his arm and my arm around his waist, we staggered through the camp, looking like naught so much as two revelers the worse for drink. I got him to his tent, with none the wiser, and returned to my lord.
Count Claudio would be sore the next morning, but he would no doubt put it down to the rigors of the previous day's battle. He would have no memory of this night.
But Don John would. And each time he gazed upon his brother, he would recall the use he had made of his discontent.
As would I.
~End~