King Ragnar Imagines

Lothbrok I

He couldn't do it.

Axe raised to that chubby little neck and he backed out like a bitch. He convinced himself that Ivar would suffer a cruel death. If he died a cruel death, it would be his fault. But– by the end of the ninth day, he bore Ivar over his knee and gave him all the proper rights that a son should have. It was what Aslaug wanted. So he gave her what she wanted and with it, a dry spell fell over any romance he could have had with her.

Athelstan, who always stood by Ragnar, saw it differently than him. His dearest of lovers did not just look as if he was in a state of mourning. He was bored. The great Ragnar was bored with the ins and outs of life in Kattegat.

"Ragnar." Athelstan perched above the legs of his dear friend. He was fiddling a piece of wheat in his calloused fingers. Mm. Ragnar would grunt. Athelstan could breathe some life into his bones with his stories.

"I've heard great things of a princess. A Swedish princess." Athelstan knew how to garner his attention.

"A princess?" His back straightens, eyes as curious as the raven he was known for.

"Yes. A beautiful princess named (Y/N). Her father is King Herrauðr." Athelstan supplies a name that is familiar to him. It is the same King that had come to see Aslaug, begging for a remedy to an overgrown lindworm whom wound around the outside of his daughter's chambers.

"I've heard of her." Ragnar scrunches his nose, thumb meeting his lip. To say he was intrigued was an understatement. He desired her before, he desired her now and he knew that if he kept ignoring this itch under his trousers, it would keep bothering him.

"I have heard that her hair is so long, it drapes along the palace floors. That her hips are wide and ready for sons. But most of all, how sweet she tastes." Athelstan didn't need to say more. The way that Ragnar's clear blue eyes followed his lips, he knew that his friend was listening. He was intrigued. Long hair and wide hips, kinks of the norsemen.

Ragnar's face involuntarily twitches. "What do you propose I do?" He asks.

He's asked this question to himself before. Claiming the woman would mean overcoming the beast. The beast alike to jormungandr, the great serpent. Athelstan hears Aslaug calling her husband back inside, hands donned with Ivar's shining bright aurelian hair.

"Find a way to overcomeits venom." He stands up and waits for Ragnar to do the same. Ragnar glances to his wife, standing with her arms full of his son.

"You will go with me?" He suggests.

"Anywhere you go." Athelstan follows up. So they decided.

"I will promise her to any man that can save her!" King Herrauðr was an older man– gone soft by many years of ruling, unable to slay the dragon that spat such poison at him. Half of his face was eaten away as if by poison. The other half of his face aged by the stress in being unable to see his beautiful daughter in years.

"Really?" Ragnar brought his goblet to his lips.

A princess– he had one. Aslaug who was hovering from the back of the Great Hall with a particularly sharp look in her eyes. Her arms were full of his latest child of the three: Ubbe, Hvitserk and Ivar the Boneless.

"Loki has played his game with me ten years. Since my daughter barely came of age." The older king laments. "He grew the lindworm I gave her into a beast."

Ragnar clicks his jaw to the side, grinding tooth against tooth as he looks back to Athelstan who stands beside him. The pair exchange a looks: Athelstan a blank stare with the smallest of mischievous smiles glinting at his lips. Oh Ragnar knew his best friend, the male counterpart that he was inseparable from. He laughs under hushed breath.

"I might be interested in assisting you, my friend." Ragnar says with his goblet to his lips once again. The King erects his spine. A son of Odin that has come to help him? There was nothing better. "But I might need more incentive."

A princess would be incentive enough for anyone. But for the Great Ragnar! He needed more. After all, he was a ruler. A ruler did not just leave his kingdom undefended. As if there was such a thing. At home was his son Bjorn, who he would intrust over his treacherous brother. But Bjorn was young.

"I will send coin to you. A bounty of gold! You may have my only daughter and gold."

Ragnar grins. "I knew we would meet an agreement."

Of course it wasn't long before Aslaug caught word of the beautiful princess that he was to bring to Kattegat. She was furious, even through the coldness of her words.

"So you are going to rescue princess (Y/N)?" Lagertha approached him one day as he treated a pair of clothes with tar and sand. They had not been on speaking terms for months. Their words were curt with one another.

Any time he questioned her about his son– Aslaug's words were curt as if to roll him off her shoulder. Now, he was the one in a position of power. She came to him with nothing to hold over his head.

"Yes." He answers, half lidded eyes fluttering open when Aslaug approached him with a hand atop of his braided hair.

"And you're going to make her yours?" Aslaug enunciated the words harshly. Ragnar roses his hand to his upper throat, scratching the scruff there. Then taking the hand off the top of his braids, his mouth parts.

"Do you care?" He asks.

"No." She lies quickly. "Of course not, Lothbrok."

She motions to his pants, shaggy as they were. Lothbrok, he laughs. A name meaning hairy breeches. He went back to the treatment of his pants.