“Imbecile! Animal! Shameless piece of shit!” 

Trying not to laugh, Demyan trailed behind Leksa. The profanities the other muttered under his breath were so familiar Demyan could almost imagine another fortress, another corridor, another Leksa. 

Younger, smaller, cuter. 

His lean frame, effortless grace in each step, how he had carried himself. His golden hair, always clean and shiny and smooth, teasing Demyan to check if it would have felt just as silky and nice as it had looked. Each time he had turned around, side-eyed Demyan to make sure that eyesore had followed him to hear all the carefully picked insults, his bangs had tickled his cheekbones and nose. His lips, sneering and smirking, plush and peachy and prettier than any girl’s. 

Fuck, how cute he had been. 

Young, ambitious, fearless, tongue sharper than any blade and smiles sweeter than any poison. 

And all of it—all of it he had kept only for Demyan. The vicious words, the mean looks, the nasty snickers and that graceless, primal way he had hated losing. 

He had been human in so many ways back then. 

Blushing and stuttering from hurt pride, yelling and scratching when Demyan had lost his control and couldn’t help it. Like kids did, excited and still exploring—shaky hands touching longer, grabbing harder, pushing deeper. 

They had been so, so young. So dumb and inexperienced, blindly consumed with each other, spending every conscious moment on getting under each other’s skin. 

Until, finally, they had managed to rip each other apart.

The older, stronger, cunninger Leksa didn’t falter when Demyan touched him. Got angry, sure, blushed a bit—a natural reaction, liquor and fury spilling into red on his skin. But he didn’t falter. Didn’t get flustered, didn’t fight with all his dirty tricks, all his might. He didn’t run away in shame and confusion, like he used to. He walked away with head held high, leaving Demyan on his knees without looking back. 

Far down the corridor, when whatever spite was holding him up wore off, Leksa stumbled. Quickly, Demyan caught him, easy grip on his waist that Leksa could shake off with no trouble. Which was exactly what he did. 

“Do not touch me.” He snapped Demyan’s hands off of him. Balance lost, he leaned on the wall and gritted his teeth, no doubt hating how clouded his mind was. Served him right. 

Turning so his shoulders were pressed against the surface, Leksa threw his head back, silky gold catching in the crevices of old limestone. Palms on the wall, trying to find purchase where there was nothing to grab onto, Leksa cursed under his breath. 

“I hate you, so fucking much.” He shut his eyes tightly, eyelashes fluttering and brows creased.

Torches flickered with unsteady fire, light dancing on Leksa’s smooth skin, so dim and warm Demyan could no longer see whether the blush kept coloring his cheeks.

The fortress’s corridors were narrow, barely enough for three men to pass through them shoulder to shoulder. Demyan could walk up to Leksa, cage him between his hands, press him into the wall until he truly couldn’t breathe. So he would beg more earnestly, so he would get genuinely afraid. 

But would he? Did Leksa even fear Demyan enough for that? Why would he? 

Crimson blazing in his eyes, Demyan mirrored Leksa's pose—relaxed against the opposite wall, putting all the distance this narrow space allowed between them. 

“You started it.” Demyan shrugged, keeping his voice low and controlled. “I sincerely wanted to be friends this time around.”

Barking an incredulous laugh, Leksa blinked his eyes open. Misty and reddened, they met Demyan’s.

“Friends? We could never be friends. Be grateful I settled for allies.” 

Brow arched, Demyan flicked him a smile. 

“I did well with Ambassador, yeah? I didn’t leave you a choice.” He wasn’t sure why he asked that, not like he needed Leksa’s praise. Deep down, though, maybe he wanted to rub it in. 

“Wrong. The gold didn’t leave me a choice,” lazily, Leksa replied. He rolled his shoulders and slumped his full weight against the wall as if incredibly tired. “Horses, idiots, Kings and Emperors didn’t leave me a choice,” he continued, “while you merely lucked into having what I needed. And were desperate enough to offer it.” 

It wasn’t desperation, Demyan wanted to protest. Like he would have done back then, fire in his young blood and that scorching desire to prove himself. But now? What did he have to prove to Leksa, of all people? 

“If not for the war, think we would have ever seen each other again?” Demyan asked.

Leksa leveled him with a look, long and probing. 

“No.” He cut off the road before it could even take shape. “There wouldn’t be any reason for me to regard you as anything more than a terrible memory.”

Outside, the wind picked up, loud gusts warning of the incoming storm. 

“So you did think of me? I’m flattered.” Demyan chuckled. Inadvertently, his eyes landed on Leksa’s lips, still as full and peachy as when they had effortlessly muddled Demyan’s mind into a mess. 

He stared, trying to remember how it felt. He stared and stared and, fuck, he could no longer find it in himself. 

“Of course, I thought of you,” Leksa said, softly. “Warlord Demyan, didn’t you crawl your way back onto the map just so I would have to fucking think of you?” 

That made Demyan laugh. Lowering his head and crossing his hands on his chest, with shoulders shaking, he looked at Leksa from beneath his lashes. 

“That would please you greatly, yeah? The idea that everything I do—I do it because of you. Dear wife, you love me so?”

Rolling his eyes, Leksa smiled his own twisted smile. 

“Maybe I do, husband. Maybe I long for you, dream of you, cannot sleep without imagining you—” he loosened his collar with a graceful pull of his hand, opening his neck— ”maybe, every time I bed a girl, I turn her around and picture you. Would you like that?”

Eyes on that milky expanse of skin, on the way the throat shifted with each word, Demyan felt himself heat up. 

“What do you picture?” he asked. 

Tracing the column of his throat with the tips of his fingers, Leksa hummed. 

“You still have that whip scar on your back, yes? I picture it. But, to be honest, I don’t like girls that much.” Leksa’s fingers trailed lower, pushing aside the seam of his robes to line the collarbone. “They’re hard to please and dream up sand castles. Or, more often than not, they see me as a way out, holding me until the very end so I put a child in their bellies.” Demyan watched each of his moves like a hawk, his own heart thrumming in his ears over the silky voice. “So, sometimes, when I’m too high after a good battle and don’t want to bother, I picture you. Would you take me from behind, push my face into the pillow, hoping I would choke?”

Demyan would do that, easily. Weight down on him and press him into a bed, rock into him so violently so their bones would break. 

“No, you like my face too much. You would spread my legs, get between them,” Leksa continued, fingers tracing up and down the slim line of his chest visible through loosened robes, “you would invade me, tear me apart. You’re a dog, so you would bite me all over, sink that golden fang so deep into my skin I would bleed.”

Mindlessly, Demyan licked his metal canine. It wasn’t much sharper than a normal tooth would be, but he could surely clamp his jaws hard enough. The skin on the neck was delicate; he could draw blood effortlessly. Taste another metal in his mouth, rich and thick and salty and as sweet as a permanent mark for Leksa to see every time he looked in a mirror. 

“You would like that, wouldn’t you? Claiming me for yourself. What a trophy I would be.”

His fingers trailed up, up the neck, to his chin, then drew around his lower lip. Demyan followed them, stared at those lips spouting filth. Now, he felt something. Long forgotten but far less pure and juvenile than it ever had been. 

He swallowed, looking up to meet Leksa's eyes. Still glazed with drunken fog, still as black as the deepest waters on a moonless night. 

“Too bad, then, that I would rather fuck a thousand whores and father a hundred bastards than ever let you do that.” 

Drenched in a bucket of ice-cold water, Demyan stilled. Heart still racing, pure hunger tightening his throat, arousal tickling at his bones, he clenched his jaws so hard his teeth screeched. He glared at Leksa, at his smirk, at the smugness he could almost see oozing out of him. 

“Such great detail. You must dream of my cock way too often.” Demyan bit back, crude and vulgar. 

Leksa waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, here and there. It is your only redeeming quality, after all.” 

Unable to hold himself back, Demyan strode forward. He grabbed Leksa's jaw and caged him with another hand on the wall, bringing his face up, clutching tight enough to leave bruises should Leksa try to move. 

“You sure have a wild imagination, Leksa,” Demyan muttered, leaning close enough so their breaths merged in the narrow space between their lips, “very romantic. How lovely of you to picture me so kind.”

Leksa's eyes whirled with madness, excitement; he was gobbling up Demyan’s outburst with all the greed. 

Licking his lips, Leksa whispered, “Are you not? Pure, soft Demyan, learning all the harsh lessons in the worst possible ways.”

Clutching harder, so the flash of pain passed through Leksa’s gaze, Demyan grinned. 

“I could take you right here, with you screaming and punching, right on this dirty floor,” he muttered. Leksa’s breath hitched. “Let me do that? Why would I ever need you to let me?” Demyan lodged his knee between Leksa’s legs, pressing on his crotch. “You nasty, perverse whore, is that what you want?” Leksa was hard. Demyan could feel him pulsing under the fabric, could see the madman’s delight fogging his eyes. “Do you enjoy it that much?” 

Swiftly, Leksa grabbed Demyan’s sides and pushed him closer, biting his lip as the action resulted in added friction. 

With a shaky exhale, Leksa tipped his head up so their lips grazed, a fleeting little touch. 

“You’re so easy,” he murmured, “I enjoy it, yes, how easy you are.” Leksa licked Demyan’s lower lip, his hot tongue swiping over the skin slowly, painfully so. Demyan could barely hold back, reminding himself again and again that none of it was real, a game, a twisted new game Leksa devised to torture him. “Go on, then, take me. Make me scream and cry. Make it hurt, as much as you can.” 

So close, with Leksa’s scent all around him, with him warm and firm against his chest, with Leksa’s arousal evident, pressing against his knee, fuck, Demyan was losing his mind. 

“I hate you,” he muttered into Leksa’s lips, closing the measly distance between them. Licking into his mouth, prying it open with the hold on Leksa’s jaw, pushing his tongue inside so he couldn’t breathe. 

Leksa welcomed the kiss with a mirrored violence, met Demyan’s onslaught with his own fervor. He bit his tongue, then soothingly licked under it, tilted his head just in the right moment so he could take the lead, if only for a moment. Demyan pressed on his crotch harder, distracting him just enough to bite back, sinking his teeth into Leksa’s lower lip. 

“You are wet, dear wife,” Demyan mumbled, taunted into the kiss. “Was that all it took?” He moved his lips to Leksa’s ear, thrusting his knee so the wetness dirtied his own pants, so Leksa trembled in his arms and swallowed a moan. “Some horses and you spread your legs for me?” he whispered hotly and bit the earlobe. Leksa’s fingers dug deeper into Demyan’s waist; there were bound to be bruises tomorrow. 

Demyan nuzzled Leksa’s neck, breathed in that head-spinning scent. Reining in the last of his control and letting the most vicious part of him take charge, Demyan whispered into the smooth skin: 

“It’s not me who’s easy, you are just cheap. Always have been.” 

In the next moment, Leksa pushed him away. So forcefully Demyan stumbled back and hit the opposite wall with his back. Not feeling the pain, though he was sure it must have hurt, Demyan started to laugh. He watched Leksa’s swollen, spit-wet lips narrowing into a thin line, his muddled with desire eyes clearing up, watched the rise and fall of his chest and his tightly fisted hands. 

“Did it hurt?” Demyan asked. 

“Fuck you.” Glaring at Demyan, Leksa wiped his lips with the back of his wrist.

“No, thanks. I find paying for a hole a bit distasteful.” 

Pushing himself off the wall, Leksa fixed his robes and turned. Without reply, he walked down the corridor, wide, controlled steps, not a stumble. As he reached far enough, so he was almost out of Demyan’s earshot, he stopped and glanced behind. Like he used to, long ago. 

Demyan did not follow him, didn’t even think of it. He simply watched him leave with amused eyes. 

“What?” Demyan nudged, easy and carefree. 

“Next time,” Leksa started, voice level and only loud enough for Demyan to hear, “my price will be the kind you wished you never paid. Sleep tight, Demyan.” With one final unreadable gaze, Leksa left. 

Shaking his head, Demyan looked up to the ceiling. Once the echo of a door slam reached him, Demyan asked:

“Are you done lurking around?”