griffith reads guts a book, guts gives griffith a handjob.
(this is my first smut ever so like lemme know if its ass lol)
read on ao3
“Since Brutus, the bold baron, first bent hither, after the siege and assault had ceased at Troy, there is, many an adventure born befallen such, ere this. Now who bears the crown of thorn, may he bring us to his bliss – amen,” Griffith reads off, his fingers running down to the end of the page as he finishes the story.
Guts shifts, slides his chin away from where it had been resting atop Griffith’s head and down to press against Griffith’s cheek as he surveys the illustration of a green-skinned man, holding his own severed head like a dullahan.
This is their routine, now. After the sun sets and the rest of the men have filtered into the taverns or back to the barracks, Guts will make his nightly pilgrimage to Griffith’s quarters. Sometimes they’ll talk, sometimes they’ll lie together in silence, but Griffith’s favourite way to spend their time is what he’s doing now – sitting in Guts lap, reading to him from his collection of books that grew when the paychecks came in. So far they’ve made it through Dante’s Divine Comedy, The Decameron, and what scattered translations of Sinbad are available. Griffith always patiently explains the nuances of the prose, pauses to let Guts examine the pictures in the margins, and, if in an especially good mood, will even sing the madrigals and ballads. Guts doesn’t know how to read, so he mostly just offers his commentary.
“Wait… why’d he need to make that deal with Gawain? With the kisses and all that?” Guts asked.
“To test Sir Gawain’s honesty.”
“Yeah, but his wife’s in on it, right? Couldn’t she just tell him what she did with Gawain?”
“Perhaps he wanted to kiss Sir Gawain, but was too shy to ask him outright,” Griffith’s eyes light up with that amused look Guts is all too familiar with, “I think I can understanding the feeling of being interested in a handsome knight.”
Guts reddens, but shakes his head, "Well, you don’t have to dress up in green and pretend you’re gonna chop my head off to get me to kiss you.“
“I guess I’m lucky, then,” Griffith smiles, tilting his chin up to press his lips to Guts’, just for a moment. The way Guts’ arms tighten around him is nearly imperceptible, but to Griffith, who observes so closely everything Guts does, it feels like a vice clamping down.
He’s reminded of the days when this seemed impossible, and he’d steal the contact he desperately craved in other ways – drinking from Guts’ wine with lips placed over the cup where Guts’ own had been seconds before, offering Guts food from his fork and then licking it clean, shushing Guts with his fingers on Guts’ mouth. Not much has changed since then, honestly. He’s still obsessed with Guts, always thinking about him, wondering what he’d say or do if he were there. The only difference is that now he can express how he feels without fear that he’ll be shunned for it.
He pulls away a few inches, gaze flicking up from Guts’ mouth to his eyes. “Why don’t you say ‘sir’?”
“Huh?”
“Earlier, you called him Gawain instead of Sir Gawain. Why?”
Griffith feels Guts’ shoulders shrug as he replies, “dunno, guess it never occurred to me as being something important.”
Guts has no regard for caste or class – he won’t bow to the king, toast to anyone he doesn’t care for, or act subordinate to any of the nobles who roam the courtyards where the Hawks take their recess. It’s one thing in a list of many that Griffith admires about him. Although he’s simple, uninterested in power or fame or wealth – all things that would drive other men mad – he’s far from lifeless. When they’re here alone like this, even Griffith’s own leaping ambitions are overthrown by the all-consuming presence of Guts.
“Does it bother you, then, when the raiders call you ‘sir’ or ‘commander’?”
“Not really, but I’ve already got a name, so I don’t see why anybody should call me by something else, you know?”
“Yes, sir,” Griffith quips, causing Guts to roll his eyes. The sound of Griffith slamming the book shut resonates throughout the room with finality, and he could see Guts watching him from out the corner of his eye.
“Do you want a drink?” Griffith asks as he slides off the bed, moving to grab the glass decanter from the table by the fire.
“Sure, why not,” Guts replies, and Griffith pours them both a glass of wine before returning to his burrow between Guts’ legs. Griffith might now be a viscount instead of a mercenary leader, but he hadn’t lost his penchant for liquor. He takes a long, healthy sip before setting his glass off to the side. Guts can’t help but notice that Griffith’s lips are now stained red, and his eyes linger just enough for Griffith to know what he was thinking.
He cups Guts’ cheek, tilting his head and letting his eyes fall closed as his mouth meets Guts’. With arms tucked flush to Guts’ sides, Griffith coaxes his mouth open, sucking on Guts’ lower lip then nibbling at the soft flesh. Guts reacts enthusiastically and Griffith can feel tongue brushing his palate where the taste of wine still lingered.
There’s an unending restlessness that seems to plague Guts, pushing him to keep moving, never stay pent up, fill the spaces where the others are content to do nothing with sword practice or taking walks or drinking. He would take life head-on at double speed if he could, but Griffith thinks that here, when there’s nothing else for Guts’ mind to be occupied by but the two of them, Guts seems careful, unsure. He fumbles with the thick laces of Griffith’s shirt, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as the linen unravels and falls away. Against the swimming black of his clothes, Griffith’s torso is clean-cut white.
Guts wanders, thumbs tracing the divots of Griffith’s hip bones, feeling the ridge where they jut out from the sloping plane of Griffith’s stomach. Griffith’s already trembling when Guts reaches his thighs, one hand having abandoned its post there to run fingers through Griffith’s hair while the other draws circles near the crook of Griffith’s knee.
There is no precedent for what they do. Guts has told him, in very few words, his one and only previous experience with a man and it hurt Griffith so much to hear that he couldn’t touch Guts for weeks without feeling guilt, without questioning if he was overstepping his bounds and making Guts uncomfortable. Griffith is the only person Guts has held, kissed, and it shows in his hesitant explorations.
Griffith is not so untried. He’s slept with men before, learned what they liked, but he hardly knows anything about pleasure himself. Sex has always just been a tool, a process of exchanging his body for money; feeling humiliated, dirty, and objectified is a part of that process – it’s not supposed to feel good. This, what he lets Guts do to him and what he does in turn to Guts, this is an entirely different thing. There is no purpose to it other than indulging each other.
Guts’ fingers run down the inseam of his pants, stopping at the waistband and looking at Griffith in silent question. Griffith nods, gaze fixed purposefully on the nightstand, and Guts follows, retrieving the small bottle Griffith had bought after their last campaign and spilling the liquid into his cupped palm.
He’s pressed against Guts, encaged by Guts’ arms with his head leaned back on Guts’ shoulder, ribs heaving and lips wet and eyes half-closed. He turns Guts’ face to kiss him, gasping as he feels Guts pull his breeches down to his hips and finally begin to touch him.
Perhaps it’s surprising and maybe even ironic that Griffith is sensitive to contact, especially from Guts, and he knows Guts is the same. They’ve both held lives before this that consisted of learned distrust and distance, so to permit another person to see them vulnerable is often distressing. When they first started doing this they were so tentative they might not have done anything at all – Guts might graze Griffith’s elbow or Griffith might reach for his hand between the folds of his coat when they were out, and that was it. What they do now has been a long time coming and it’s still not the most Griffith’s done with another man but somehow it feels like more.
Guts strokes him, twisting as he reaches the head of his dick. Griffith can see Guts watching his own hand move, a look akin to awe dawning on his face. Griffith arches backward then forward, as though unsure of whether he wanted to move closer or flinch away. Guts’ pace is achingly slow, but he must hit a sweet spot because Griffith lets out a low groan and his eyes squeeze shut.
Behind him, Griffith can feel Guts growing hard. Their breathing is out of sync and equally heavy, coming out as puffs of fug in the chilled air. Guts ruts against him like a dog, the fabric of his pants rubbing on Griffith’s ass, and Griffith moved with him.
“Guts,” Griffith chokes out, a whisper tilting upward into a sob and all his exhales dissolve into sighs. Guts groans, low and deep in his chest but cut off halfway through by Griffith tethering their lips together again.
Griffith is getting close, he can feel it. He would be embarrassed at how easy he was if it weren’t for the fact that only Guts is able to do this to him, only Guts’ voice and Guts’ lips and Guts’ hands – Griffith has seen those hands rend skin from bone, drive men off horseback, send severed limbs and screaming heads flying across the battlefield but they were nothing but gentle with him, like he was special just as Guts was special to him.
The kiss is broken with a chorus of panting as Guts nuzzles his face into Griffith’s neck, nose buried in white hair. Teeth ghost over Griffith’s shoulder and that alone is enough to push him to the edge.
“Ah- ah,” Griffith whimpers, pressure building in his stomach. Guts moves faster, tightening his grip just shy of painful and Griffith’s hips buck, breath robbed from him. When his head lolls to the right he sees Guts staring at him, pupils blown, and the moment their eyes lock, Griffith cums.
The sight of it has Guts following suite, wet heat splattering the small of Griffith’s back. They collapse on the pillows, limbs entangled, both warm and happy and slightly sweaty.
What follows is a procession of simplicity: Griffith pecks Guts’ forehead, Guts haphazardly tugs the blankets up around them, and they settle into a position fit for cuddling where Griffith drapes himself over Guts with his ear near Guts’ heart. Griffith knows that later, when morning comes and they have to part ways, this reprieve from that foreboding angst haunting their relationship like a spectre will subside and he will be shoved back in. He will take up the mask he wears for the world and command troops and be who he isn’t, but for now, he settles into the familiar heat of Guts like a second skin and forgets.
Tag: nsfw
#nsfw this is ooc because farnese is a total bottom but im #fixing berserk one step at a time and maybe next time not at 2 am with my trackpad
Guts thinking about the Band, remembering them and recognizing that their memories are part of what drives and inspires him and keeps him going now. His bros and comrades get one page, and Casca and Griffith get the next two and like, goddamn that image. (And this isn’t even about how his platonic Hawk bros get their moment and then his objects of sexual affection get theirs js.)
Like yeah I wrote a long post about how Guts and Casca’s relationship is all about Griffith from start to end but yk I could’ve just posted this page because it says the exact same thing in a lot fewer words.
I mean look at it. Guts and Casca having sex. Casca is facing towards us/Guts, Griffith is, once again, facing away. But they’re wrapped in his cape. They are connecting to each other in Griffith’s absence – Griffith is unavailable, emotionally and literally, but Casca is there and ready to be connected to. And his presence literally surrounds them as they fuck out their feelings about him thru each other.
And it’s two pages before Guts’ revelation that leaving her behind was just like abandoning Griffith which makes him vow to find her and make up for it. Liiiiiiike these parallels aren’t subtle.

i was browsing thru all the pages i have saved looking for smthn to talk about and this one here hit me with the sudden thought:
what if those scratch marks aren’t from that day, but earlier?
idk the way we’re in the midst of the sex scene and then Griffith’s first startling, intruding memory isn’t Guts leaving but Guts saying “you believe that, don’t you?” back after the assassination, followed by the reveal of the marks on Griffith’s shoulder made me go hmm.
Last time I talked about those scratches I mentioned that Griffith showed up at Charlotte’s window in the same clothes he was wearing during the duel so if the marks came from that day you have to imagine him holing up in his room, taking his clothes off, self-harming, and then redressing – which is fine, but it’s an extra step you have to add yourself as a reader, and therefore a little counter-intuitive.
Whereas the placement of panels here feels like cause and effect to me.
Last time we saw Griffith self harming it was while talking about his “blood-soaked dream,” after doing something that makes him feel dirty for the sake of that dream. This time we see SI marks after a panel in which Guts reminds him about that dream and calls his resolve into question, after doing something that makes him feel dirty for the sake of the dream (the assassinations).
Why does Guts question his resolve? Because Griffith needed emotional reassurance from Guts – he needed Guts to tell him he wasn’t cruel for involving him, for “dirtying” Guts by proxy, essentially (”I involved you in this filthy scheme… and I didn’t even get my hands dirty.”) Like I think he needs reassurance that he isn’t dragging Guts down or making him feel dirty himself by virtue of being close to him, and involving him in the darker aspects of his rise to the top. And Guts’ response to that is only to remind him that it’s necessary.
So my point is that “do you think I’m cruel” is another version of “is it… too dirty?” Is he dirty, are people going to feel disgusting too if they get close to him, if they know about what he’s done?
So imagine: Guts tells Griffith, hey, w/e man all this fucked up shit is necessary for your dream. You believe that, don’t you? Griffith does this:

And then he thinks about Guts’ words while he’s getting ready for bed that night or bathing the next morning, thinks about what he’s done and what he’s had Guts do for the sake of his dream, thinks about Guts asking, “you believe that, don’t you?” and tears up his shoulder, convincing himself that he does believe it, the same way he tore up his arms in the river as he talked himself through how necessary it is to dirty himself for his “blood-smeared” dream.

(And it’s been a month since then but lbr if he’s scratching as deep as he did last time those marks would still be very visible here.)
And then Guts leaves. And Griffith thinks it’s because he feels dirty by proxy, because Griffith revealed too much of himself and Guts didn’t like what he saw, because of his dream.
Griffith remembers, “you believe that, don’t you?” and he remembers Guts walking away.
He’s remembering when he hurt himself and why, he’s telling himself, “yes I believe it, it’s necessary, even if it’s why you left my dream is worth it. This is the evidence.” He traces those marks but this time he doesn’t scratch himself.

He’s finally lost his conviction, because losing Guts isn’t worth it and there’s no way he can convince himself that it is.

(this is kind of built on a lot of stuff i wrote here lol, hopefully it makes sense without that but just in case there’s a pseudo part one.)
ps if griffith already had those self-inflicted marks on his shoulder when guts won the duel a hair’s breadth away from wounding griffith exactly on that spot… well griffith self harms as an expression of his feelings of guilt and to drive himself towards his dream. feels symbolic of guts obliterating that dream and being a stronger force than griffith’s guilt, at least for a while.




I’ve suggested before that NeoGriff and Casca are similar from Guts’ pov in that they’re both downgraded fascimiles of their old selves.
@godclaw mentioned recurring doll imagery to me and now I’m thinking yk what – if anything is making NeoGriff act without thought to save his former friends, i’m gonna suggest it could be a metaphorical tiny cute Griffith buried in his psyche that’s been… unfrozen or whatever now that his heart is bthumping. Casca’s was found in the doll’s chest right where her heart should be, and we’ve seen Casca’s fragment of her self take the wheel in a pinch and slaughter attempted rapists after all. Idk yk this broken doll imagery is real strong with both of them, I want to assume it’s purposeful.
Idt we’ll be getting magic therapy for NeoGriff lol, but I do think that the journey to the centre of Casca doesn’t just reveal Casca’s psyche but also shows us how people generally work in the spiritual world of Berserk. So if any part of regular old human Griffith remains after his heart froze, he went through a weird visual spiritual fragmentation and was pieced back together using the Power of Evil, and then was reborn as a flesh and blood messiah with a thawing heart, it stands to reason it might be similar to mini Casca.

Was I the only one who thought they might actually kiss in this scene the First time you ever saw/ read it? Because I did . I was ready to react. I was about to go on all those sites and say. “ YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD FOOL ME INTO THINKING THIS WAS NOT GAY. I WAS NOT FOOLED. I ALWAYS KNEW!! “
But it never happened.
And I was like “oh” as I calmly shut the page I’d just opened to rant and go nuts on.
So, I thought Griffith would go for a kiss after taking Guts’ face in his hand and saying he belonged to him forever and ever. This scene also is a good place for it.
If this were a man and a woman everyone and their mother would be making gif sets of this and saying how they were so close to kissing after having the “what is this relationship” talk only to be interrupted by the plot. They would be doing this even if they never verbally said their feelings and everyone would accept it as a fact because straight people.
i never thought they’d kiss because I never expect anything I really want to happen lol. but like, this scene is as romantic as you can get without a kiss. if one of them was a woman people would call you delusional for suggesting their feelings are platonic lmao, like:
gentle breeze wafting griffith’s long hair across his face? check
declaration of feelings while looking away followed by a turn and hard eye contact? check
awkward, surprised response? check
inconvenient interruption? checkmate
going back to the manga but you cannot look at these panels and then tell me with a straight face that we’re supposed to think their feelings are brotherly or whatever:



and yk what while i’m on this and since yesgabsstuff brought up the duel, you don’t have your characters ask each other if they’re gay, fail to confirm or deny, and say things like, “if you win you can have my sword or my ass,” if you’re not trying to point the audience in a certain direction.
it’s subtext, but it’s like, Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence style subtext, where it’s not just a nice bonus if u recognize the symbolism or the gay audience reaching bc we’re desperate, but it’s the clear intended reading.
In fact, I’ll go one further – the very first parallel we have for Guts and Griffith, the first example we’re given to contextualize the mysterious, intense relationship between Guts and Griffith/Femto and the nature of the sacrifice – which we already know is what happened between them – is the Count and his wife. “The person you loved the most and hated the most!” Cue that shot of Femto looking slightly over his shoulder so there can be no doubt who also buried his fragile human heart.

(like i just re-read this scene and i love it so much because everything leading up to these panels exists to make the audience go “what the fuck is their deal?” like puck even directly asks “what happened between those two?” And then we get the Count’s story and it’s like, ohhh ok i guess they were in love at one point and then betrayal and despair followed and now one’s a demon and one’s really pissed off. gotcha. And then nothing in the golden age disabuses you of that notion.)
(ps “That’s right… you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t cut away half of yourself.” The Godhand to the Count. “[…]And that unkingly half of yours shall all be gathered then in that place.” Skull Knight to Guts.)
















