Bending the Knee

Bending the Knee is a story written and illustrated by juou no zan. It ran in Issue 85 at https://www.shousetsubangbang.com/mirror/bending-the-knee/.

Summary

King Lorrit gets to stay alive and stay king, and all he has to do is whatever the leader of the invasion tells him to. It's an easy choice to end the fighting, but he didn't expect to enjoy himself so much.

Author's Notes

I finished this shortly before the deadline for Issue 84, which was for short shorts. Given that I tend to occupy the higher end of the word count limit for SSBB, I initially thought I wouldn't have anything for that issue. But in writing this 19k word story, I found myself getting attached to Osett, so when I reached the end of this story rather sooner than I thought I would, and felt like I couldn't stop writing yet, I cranked out Cultural Contact. Since that was pretty much Just Sex, I figured it would stand alone until the next issue could accept this one.

I did not realize when I started this that Lorrit was going to be oblivious to his own bisexuality but it is hilarious to me that he keeps being like "if only Nateno was with someone who could really appreciate the fact that he is so hot :("

Most of this story was written over my first spring break in grad school, and finished up as my state started closing for Covid-19. But I started it almost a year earlier, and wrote at least part of that first bedroom sex scene while working on a touring show of Hello, Dolly. I don't think this has any bearing on the story whatsoever, but I think I've mentioned it all the other times I wrote a story for SSBB backstage at work, so this goes on the list too.