Far too late, Esra noticed that he wasn’t alone.

A terribly bruised young man sat on the rock where Esra had laid his clothes out to dry, staring at him with sullen eyes. The breeze caught his hair, and coppery strands shone in the sunlight.

Esra’s heart pounded when realisation hit him.

“Kian!” he blurted out, relief thudding through him. “You’re alive!”

It had been years since they had spoken to one another, but to Esra, none of that mattered now. He took a few hesitant steps forward, pushing through the currents towards that familiar face, then froze where he stood. Something about Kian looked… wrong.

The young man’s face was slightly sunken on one side, distorted in a way that Esra couldn’t comprehend, but the sight caused a dark nervousness to take root.

In more ways than one, this would not be the boy he remembered.

“Alive?” Kian grunted. “Alive enough.” And then he bared his teeth at Esra in a facsimile of his cheery grin.

Esra couldn’t hold back his gasp. Every tooth on the sunken side of Kian’s face was missing, leaving him with only half a smile. Kian’s eyes narrowed harshly at Esra’s horrified reaction.

“Yeah, that's what he did to me,” Kian spat. His pronunciation was affected too. “I wasn’t talking, even when they threw my wife to the soldiers. Your black knight took up a pair of the blacksmith’s tongs, small enough to fit in my traitor’s mouth...”

Kian pretended to pick up a pair of iron tongs, miming the size and weight of it in his hand. He often acted out his stories; Esra remembered as much from childhood. The boy had been everything from a dragon that kidnapped Esra from a village, to a sailor pulling a mermaid from the ocean. Now Esra watched in terror as Kian mimed his jaw being pried open by a cruel hand, the tongs being jammed inside, jostled, to emphasise his point.

“For every question I refused to answer,” Kian growled, “he pulled out a tooth.”

Esra clasped his hands over his mouth, gritting his own teeth.

“One by one.” Kian rubbed the side of his face. “There was only so much I could take. So I answered his questions.”

“Oh, Kian…” Esra cried into his shaking fingers. His heart hurt for the pain that Kian had suffered through, its echo wounding him too.

Kian was unmoved by Esra’s sympathy. “I thought you were already dead,” he said bitterly. “You've always been so fragile, I didn't expect you to last a minute. But I wished otherwise anyway, you know? You were outside the village when we were attacked. I hoped you'd seen sense and run away.”

His words were an accusation. Esra shivered in the river water.

“They found me… and surrounded me…” Esra tried to explain. “There was nowhere for me to go. And even if I had tried to run, I couldn’t outrun them...” He raised a slim hand to his neck. “My throat closes up, y-you know that…”

“Any man would rather die than willingly submit like you did,” Kian snarled so violently that Esra flinched back. “They kept you with the women and children, didn't they? They knew what you were, I suppose. A woman, a child.”

It was true. Esra had never been much of a man. Everyone had seen it. He wrapped his arms around his chest, holding himself together.

Kian peered down at him from his perch on the rock. “Still, I worried for you. What they might do to you. But I guess I needn’t have.” The young man’s mouth split into a sneer. “All the soldiers were talking about it. How you had whored yourself to the knight.”

Esra winced as if he’d been struck. All the soldiers had been talking about it... The immense shame of it all left him trembling, shrinking away from Kian’s judging eyes.

“One of them heard you moaning like a slut when he went in there to get the wine.” Kian grinned coldly down at him. His smile looked even more horrific, with half of it missing. “They were all having a great time describing how you let the knight debase you.”

“I didn't want to do it, Kian,” Esra protested, unable to believe what he was hearing. “Please believe me! He made me, he forced--”

Kian shook his head dispassionately. “This is the body of someone who didn't want it.” He tugged at the neck of his tunic. Dark bruises painted his collarbone, scattered down his chest. It made Esra’s heart ache just to see it.

“And look at you.” Kian’s voice went a little wistful. “Not a mark on you…”

That much was also true.

Oh, he’d been humiliated, forced to listen to his father’s screams. Clamped in irons and made to raid his own village for food and drink. He’d had to serve Balor’s soldiers under the almost constant threat of their desires, knowing that if he made one wrong move, they’d be on him like carrion birds. And then, despite all his efforts, his attempts at being good… the black knight had taken him anyway, forced him, hurt him, shaped him into something different.

But Esra hadn’t been disfigured. No bruises on him. Only deep inside where only he could feel it, that sensation of being cored.

Kian’s eyes roved over him in a way that only yesterday, Esra would not have understood. Now he knew all too well that covetous hunger. Could Kian truly think of him that way? An object, a thing. Not quite a man, but something weak to incite men’s hunger.

Or their desire to hurt.

It chilled him, to be still limping from his previous night, and have someone he’d trusted, someone he’d once considered his closest friend, look at him like that. To be frightened and vulnerable, with no way of escaping it. He couldn’t handle being so exposed in front of another right now. He’d had so much taken from him already.

Esra was getting cold, and Kian was right by his clothes.

“I want to get dressed,” said Esra quietly.

Kian’s mouth curled in derision. “Then get dressed.”

Esra’s heart sank as Kian settled back to watch him. “You are by my clothes…”

“I've seen you naked before.” Kian gave a dismissive shrug. “What’s the problem?”

That had been years ago. From swimming together as children. Glimpses of flesh as they got changed for bed. Not like this. Not when Esra was so naked, sore, used, as he stood before sullen eyes filled with a peculiar mix of distaste and... yearning.

Kian wasn't even looking at him like a person anymore.

“Kian, please…”

“You've always begged prettily,” Kian mused, rubbing a hand over his distorted cheek. “I liked it, when I was younger. Your eyes would go so big. I thought you sweet for it.”

Esra remembered the secret times Kian would use some excuse to pin him to the ground, always when they were alone, out of sight of the adults. As they’d grown older, and distant, Esra naturally assumed that Kian had simply tired of all their childish games, and the needy little boy who had once followed him around like a shadow.

Kian cast off their friendship so easily, that Esra supposed he’d meant little to him.

If not for last night, Esra would have lived his whole life believing this. But with his new knowledge of the dark lusts that could lurk in men’s hearts, he saw Kian’s actions for what they had truly been.

“I’d hold you down just to hear it,” Kian confessed. He cocked his head. “Did you beg for the knight? I bet he enjoyed it.”

Oh, how Esra had begged. It hadn’t done anything. Esra had no idea that his pleas for mercy only seemed to spur men on.

“Kian, please...” Esra wet his lips. He’d fall to sickness if he stayed in the water too long, and coughing fits were more of a torture for him than most. “Please… just let me get dressed.”

Kian’s voice was rough with memory. “I used to think about it, when we were younger. How easy it would be to pin you down and do it to you.”

It was hopeless. Did Kian want him hurting? Esra retreated deeper into the river and wrapped his arms around his body, fighting the urge to cry. Kian stared hard at him, his distressed face, his slim shoulders, the suggestion of his body below the water.

“You would have let me, wouldn't you?” He said it to insult, but Esra could hear a strange note of desire behind his words. “You let me do anything. You were so eager to please, so easily wounded. You never were much of a man. You’re more of a girl than my wife.”

Over the years, Esra had grown to accept the fact that Kian no longer wished to be around him. No matter how much it pained him, he tried to bear the loss gracefully. He still had his memories of happier times that he held close to his heart.

Now Kian was twisting them into something sinister, creating new wounds.

Had Kian ever cared for him? As his fear rose, Esra found that he was having trouble remembering anything at all.

“Kian please, just turn around. I'm cold.”

“Why can’t I look?” His question was laced with resentment. “I’m not going to do anything to you. Not like he did.”

How could Esra explain something that he was only just learning himself? Kian’s open gaze reminded him of how he’d been used. “I don’t want to be looked at right now.”

“So you’ll let him fuck you, but you won’t let me look at you.” Kian snorted. “Why not? I have more right to you than he does.”

“Please, Kian,” Esra begged, and his voice cracked at the name. “Don’t make me feel like more of a thing than I do already.”

Kian’s posture stiffened at that, finally a crack in that hardened shell. The moment between them stretched, and Esra’s trembles worsened in the cool river. As the sun passed from behind the cloud, new light filtered through the tree leaves to scatter bright over the water. Kian inhaled at this, at the sight of Esra, whose skin glowed like a nymph’s in the shallows.

He sighed, relented, and turned his back on the river.

* * *

Esra cautiously waded to shore, his eyes fixed on the back of Kian’s head, ready to dart back in if Kian was laying a trap. But Kian let him dress unmolested, his back rounded forward, exhaustion evident in his posture. Ugly bruises scattered down the nape of his neck, from where he’d been held down. His breaths were unsteady, like he was nursing an injury under the folds of his tunic.

Esra’s heart swelled with an overwhelming sorrow for him.

“I’m done,” Esra said quietly, once he was dressed. Kian’s head tilted in his direction, revealing the boyish lines of his handsome profile under his shock of russet hair.

Up close, Esra could see that he was crying. Had been crying a long time, going by the red of his eyes. His tears had cut clear trails through the dirt on his face.

Kian never cried. He’d been the hardy son Esra’s father had always wanted. Even as a child he’d been vibrant, strong, confident. A quick learner, and an even quicker wit.

Now, dark shadows lay under his sorrowful eyes, and his face had been forever ruined. He blinked, auburn lashes brushing away the tears, but more swelled up in their place, and spilled over his cheek. His lips were trembling.

“Esra,” he was mumbling, over and over. “Esra…”

Esra knelt beside him, and Kian leaned in close, unable to meet Esra’s eyes, but his longing was unmistakable.

They embraced, arms sliding around each other with clutching grasps. Kian moaned gratefully, pressed his face into Esra’s shoulder. His back shuddered under Esra’s hands with each anguished sob. Those years of silence between them had been broken, the tension finally snapped. They were children again, holding each other through dark, stormy nights.

“I'm so sorry he hurt you,” Kian rasped into the side of Esra’s neck. “I didn't mean to say what I said. I know you… you always do what you're told. It's not your fault, Esra. Oh, it’s not your fault at all…”

He clung to Esra so hard that the younger man found it hard to draw breath. Kian had grown since he’d known him last, with a sailor’s brawn, and large grasping hands. Esra didn’t have the strength to push him off. Kian’s fingers dug into Esra’s slim back, tightened into the damp length of his hair, making it impossible to move away. He sobbed openly into Esra’s shoulder, an outpouring of pain, disbelief, and sorrow.

Esra just held him. He found it odd, the reversal, Kian now vulnerable in his arms when it had always been the other way around. He traced his fingers through the warmth of Kian’s auburn hair, petting him, as Kian muffled his wails in Esra’s tunic.

His kindness had Kian freeze and look up at him, eyes wide, half the handsome boy he’d grown up with, half the distorted man. He looked at Esra with both wonder, and tenderness. Esra thought of what it would have done to him, to have Kian look at him like that when they were young. It had been all he ever wanted, once.

Kian, of course, shattered the spell.

“Run away with me, Esra.”