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1
He woke to the sound of rain on the water, soft and soothing. A heartbeat thrummed beneath his ear, the steady pulse guiding him back to awareness. He stared out at the gloomy lake, and felt the rise and fall of D’s chest. There were many moments he wished would last a lifetime, and perhaps this was a good candidate. But he’d had a lifetime already, and it seemed greedy to demand more. Rogier waited, knowing D never slept too late, and in the meantime he could hold onto this peace, this comfort, the sense of being protected even if the protector in question was dead to the world.
The lake water was rippling endlessly with the raindrops, and he watched the silvery surface flutter beneath the dim light of the cloudy dawn. He fancied he could see them reflected in it, from their perch upon the rocks. Shuddered at the sense that there were too many forms in that shivering mirror. One too many, it loomed over him and D, and he turned his eyes back, the budding dread as childish as it was impossible to ignore.
There was of course nothing. Just a wall of rock. The safety of the cliffs at their back had been the whole reason they’d camped here, after all. Lifted out of the water, too remote to be noticed by the things that crawled and dragged their bellies through the mud. His eyes traced the rocks, and there was nothing else to be seen. A hand brushed his lower back, and he turned to D and smiled. “I think the world may soon end,” Rogier said.
“Hm.”
Rogier explained. “You slept longer than me. So the constants of reality may be unraveling. Soon, the forces which hold our atoms together must follow, and everything will disintegrate, and we will all turn to dust.”
“Dramatic,” D answered sleepily, brushing his fingers through Rogier’s hair. He leaned eagerly into the touch, ever desperate for contact, for affection, for something to root his flighty spirit to the earth.
“The world has always been that way,” Rogier said. “So its end must be, too.” He pushed himself up and pressed his lips to D’s. The chaste greeting turned lustful when his partner deepened it, tongue searching, hands groping, and Rogier’s insides swelled with a thrill of hope that it would go on, and on, and on. D was always so serious, so responsible, so focused. Sometimes that wasn’t so thrilling at all, but other times it meant Rogier was the sole target of that unbreakable focus. And there were few things in the world so gratifying as that.
“I dreamt about you,” D murmured into his ear, lips brushing blood-warmed skin. “Sat at my feet. Looking up at me with your big, round eyes.” D’s thumb skimmed over the curved bone beneath one of the eyes in question. Warm lips pressed to Rogier’s temple and he shivered. “Supplicant and willing. Perfectly obedient.” Another kiss to his ear. “That’s how I knew it was a dream.”
Rogier smiled. “It can be as real as you’d like. For one morning, at least.”
D appeared to like that quite a bit.
2
He sat with his back to the wall of the crumbling church, and at night he thought. He used to be able to spend his watches reading by the light of the grace. There was always a concentration of that soft, warm light within churches. But it’d been four days since he stopped seeing the light, and he was beginning to think it was not going to come back. He was afraid to tell D, because he didn’t know what that meant. Would he see Rogier as a heretic? Not just as a practicioner of a sorcerous conspectus that he didn’t understand, but as an outright traitor to his beloved Order?
It was said to happen to more Tarnished than not, but he still searched the darkness, begging that heartening glow to come back, for someone to tell him what he’d done wrong and how to fix it. No, he was not seeking the Great Runes, he did not seek lordship, but he still would help this world how he could and was that so awful a thing? The Greater Will had decided that yes, he was in violation of some principle that had not been explained to him, and each day, he began to despair that there was no changing it. He may be able to hide that from D for a time, but eventually the truth would come out. It always did, no matter how good he was at lying. They were simply too inextricably linked now for the deceit to last, their souls intertwined, one tugging always at the other.
His fingers drifted idly through the pale blond hair in his lap as he thought of this. Thought of the golden light as it had once existed for him. Warm, but not overbearingly so. Bright, but not blinding. Honeyed rays, D called them in his prayers, and that was what they felt like. Something sweet and soft and comforting. He pictured it playing over D’s pale skin, tracing his contours in the light of that which he devoted himself to so wholly. Rogier could almost see it again, he thought. Could touch it. Feel that rejuvenation, its power and its strength.
But it was just desperation. This would be no different from any other sorrow he’d borne on his own. It was simply too much of a risk to speak it into existence. He gave up searching for the light and instead he watched the darkness outside. Briefly, he thought something watched back. It was sometimes hard to tell what was real and what was fantasy brought on by living a life where the nightmares always, always turned out to be real.
3
He was full, so very full, and still he begged for more. Because he was selfish, demanding, hungry, always so hungry, and he clutched D’s face frantically while bouncing wildly in his lap. D’s hips were strong and fierce as the rest of him, and he was all teeth and clawing fingers and Rogier wanted more. D said his name and Rogier moaned when he heard it. He dug his heels deeper into D’s lower back, his thighs clutching tight, his back ground against the rough stone wall. D’s fingers sank into the meat of his ass, holding him aloft with his great strength, mouthing at his throat like a wolf gone in for the kill.
Rogier didn’t know it was possible to feel so wanted, so totally seen and possessed, and to even enjoy the possession. Always he’d fled from such pursuit, teasing out just enough of what he needed from others to eke out a meager but safe emotional existence. Vulnerability was inextricably linked to danger, and he would never give anyone that sort of power over him again. All pleasures were fleeting, so why should this one be any different?
But one by one he’d broken all his own rules, which seemed a natural thing to do since he’d never been good at following any as it was. D accepted nothing less than total devotion, but gave nothing less either. Rogier had no idea how to handle it and this great unknown was as thrilling as it was terrifying and he always wanted more.
His eyes rolled in his skull and his head lolled back against the wall, D’s tongue warm over his pulse, teeth prickling at his jaw. The sharp sound of their flesh meeting filled all the space left in his ears around D’s panting. “Tell me who you belong to,” D growled against his cheek.
“You,” Rogier breathed, fingers clawing into flexing shoulders. “Oh god, D, you.”
It was the right response, it seemed, and D’s thrusts became more frenzied, erratic, deep, so deep, impossibly, like D could find some place within Rogier where they could meld their flesh and never part again. Rogier moaned as D bit into his neck and came. Rogier followed shortly, spilling himself into a broad and pale palm and begging for things he didn’t even know he wanted.
His feet touched the earth again and his legs were useless, quivering, not even here. D kissed him and their mouths moved slow and languid compared to their frenetic pace just moments ago. He could taste D’s sweat, feel it beneath his fingers as he skimmed over ribs, chest. “I love you,” D whispered, gentle and sincere and Rogier shuddered. There was joy in freedom but oh was he learning that there could be joy in captivity, too. He would gladly throw himself into the cage of D’s arms and never seek an escape again. D clutched him to his chest and drew him to the bedroll layed upon the floor of the shack. His fingers brushed sweat-soaked hair from Rogier’s forehead. “Stay with me.” It was a demand more than a request, and Rogier had not traditionally responded well to those.
But when he looked at D, and thought of any space of time spent without him, and those steadfast, clear eyes and the fierceness of his love, Rogier found compliance easy. “Always.”
4
He woke from a dream and in the dream there was a man who was like D in nearly all things. The man sat with the same posture, moved with the same liquid grace of a predator, and his hair was familiar pale gold, skin like cream and clear eyes the color of frost. Though their color was the same, their gaze was not. D was steadfast, calm, gentle, watchful. His shade was everything he wasn’t, the twisted reflection, and Rogier saw in him rage, and fire, and a thirst, bottomless, voracious, destructive. In this dream he turned those horrible eyes on Rogier, who lay immobile in that way only experienced in sleep. He held Rogier’s cheek in his hand, a thumb over his lips. With his other hand, he lifted his finger to his own mouth in a gesture of quiet.
And then Rogier woke and felt as if hours had passed in the time it took him to open his eyes. He stared at D, who tended the fire, and he could only see his shade, and the cold fury.
5
The first time the shade spoke, he said, “You don’t deserve him.”
Rogier had lain there, again unable to move, and hands that were so painfully familiar to him now, hands that had held him tenderly, cradled his face gently, touched him so intimately he could barely stand it, now fell on him like claws. He begged his body to move, to respond to the danger, even if these hands were not ever supposed to be a threat. They held his throat and they squeezed, and his vision turned black at the edges. “You sully him, and can only bring ruin.” His heart pounded in his ears and D’s shade pressed tighter, and tighter and
He woke abruptly, gasping to fill his lungs as if he’d just broken the surface of the sea after diving to the bottom. D touched his arm and said, “Are you alright?”
Rogier tried to calm his breathing, and already the dream seemed farther away. Still he felt his throat with his fingers like he might find something there, clutching, killing. He nodded to D and said, “I dreamt you were choking me,” he said.
“For business, or for pleasure?” D asked dryly, uncomfortable with the notion that he’d harm Rogier but also uncomfortable with making light.
Which was fine, since Rogier was good enough at that for the both of them. He put on a grin and let his hand fall away from his throat so he could instead use it to stop D’s hand from putting on his sword belt. “Well, maybe it was a bit of both. Would you like a recreation?” He wrapped an arm around D’s leg, fingers splayed on the inside of his left thigh. D’s features tightened, and his eyes flicked up to gauge the time. Rogier did not care for schedules, and he expressed this accordingly, mouthing at the inside seam of leather trousers.
A hand settled in his hair, pressing gently on the back of his head. Rogier tried not to think of them finding his throat instead.
6
While D slept, Rogier thought he heard him whisper. But when he looked down, D’s lips never moved. There was no fire crackling to cause confusion or cover the source of sounds. He strained his ears in search of something, a sign of danger, another traveller looking for an adequate camp, an animal, anything.
And then the voice was at his ear, velvet and gravel, “We’re nearer now.”
He jerked away, spinning fast, blade at the ready. But there was no one there. His eyes searched the dark and he crouched, ready and alert beside D who still slept soundly. With his left hand, he reached out to shake him awake before whatever was there could launch its bizarre attack.
The voice came again, D’s voice, but without all that control, without fondness, without calm. It panted into Rogier’s ear, “Did he not tell you?”
He again turned in the dark, looking for the source of the illusion, for that must be what it was. No one was at his back, but their words had been in his ear. He could feel the warmth of their breath on his skin. “D,” Rogier said sharply, trying to wake him.
“I’m here.” The words came in double, one a cold and vicious promise, one a tired answer.
Rogier couldn’t make sense of it and he still searched anxiously in the dark. He felt D moving beside him, rising into alertness after taking in Rogier’s tension and alarm. “Someone’s here,” Rogier said in a low voice.
“Where?” D asked, and his hand found his sword easily. Natural as breathing, they came together with their backs to each other, each one guarding the vulnerabilities the other couldn’t see.
“I don’t know but I heard them,” Rogier answered.
The tense moment drew out into caution out into exhaustion. They split, searched the perimeter, stood brief vigils in search of warning sounds of footsteps, breaths not their own, the rustle of cloth. There was nothing, and after a long and thorough investigation, D called him back to camp. “I found no signs of anyone,” D said. He sat back down to his bedroll, but did not go to sleep. He looked up at Rogier, who stood up still, eyes roaming the dark. “What did you hear?”
“Someone saying they were near. And they were.” Rogier looked down at D. “I felt their breath on me when they spoke.”
“Perhaps you fell asleep,” D suggested. “And dreamed this.”
Rogier worried his bottom lip with his teeth, eyes turned out to the night one last time as though the phantom would finally reveal itself. It did not. He looked at D and nodded. “That must be it.” He set up a conciliatory grin, hoping to soften the displeasure D would inevitably feel at not only being woken, but for the fact Rogier had fallen asleep during his watch. “I must have been more worn out by the day’s trek than I thought. Perhaps you ought to carry me tomorrow, so I’ll last the night’s watch.”
But D was in no mood for jokes and he never hid his thoughts. He said with the mildest irritation, “Go to sleep.”
Rogier sat beside him. “No.”
D breathed out a sigh, but didn’t argue. Nor did he resist when Rogier rested his head on his shoulder. They passed the rest of the night in relative silence, waiting for the first light of dawn.
7
He dreamt again of D’s shade straddling him, the hand on his cheek, thumb on his lips. Instead of indicating quiet, the shade leaned close, and kissed him, brief and chaste. “I want to know what he loves about you,” the shade said.
Rogier shook his head slightly, petrified of this creature that wore D’s skin. The cold hands slid over his cheeks, down his neck, over his chest. His eyes studied Rogier as if he were one of the great mysteries of the universe, some unfathomable conundrum. He muttered, “How he could love a thing like you.”
“Don’t touch me,” Rogier said, finding his voice for the first time.
“But you let everyone touch you. You don’t deny anyone except yourself,” the shade hissed back through gritted teeth.
“Shut up,” Rogier whispered, hands tensing to fists but his arms were pinned beneath the shade’s legs.
“Do I have your throat in my teeth?” Hands went to his neck and Rogier inhaled sharp and desperate. The shade tilted his head and breathed in Rogier’s scent like it may help him learn something. “I know everything he knows but that doesn’t mean I understand.”
“What are you?”
“Lonely,” the shade whispered, so sad and soft that Rogier almost pitied him. Fingers stroked his cheek, and cold eyes fixed on his. The sad expression turned hateful, enraged. “I miss him, and it’s your fault.”
Rogier strained against the weight on him when those hands clutched his face again, thumbs driving into his eyes. He struggled to wrench his arms free and bucked wildly, the heels of his boots squealing and scraping uselessly against damp stone. He screamed as he felt the shade’s left thumbnail pierce the membrane of his eye, the other following soon after, felt the blood and vitreous fluid tickle at the sensitive skin of his face as it trickled out of his skull. “It’s your fault,” the shade whispered against his cheek again, teeth bared, scraping Rogier’s skin. “It’s all your fault.”
Rogier screamed and writhed and could not escape until suddenly the shade was gone and he woke to the sound of D calling his name, gentle but urgent, hands on him. Rogier lashed out and D held him fast, whispering, “You’re alright.”
His breath came in desperate pants as reality oriented itself again and he saw the shade outlined against the glow of the Erdtree, looming over him and he gritted his teeth and shoved him away. “Rogier,” D said sternly.
He realized then it was not the shade, but D. Rogier wiped his eyes with shaking hands and grimaced at the dampness on his fingers. Sweat, stray tears, not blood and the remnants of his eyes. He tried to even out his breathing, and D came to settle beside him. A gentle hand took his cheek and turned his face. D looked at him, his worry plain because D hid nothing, D was honest and pure and everything Rogier was not. “Okay?” D said quietly.
Rogier nodded. He could not keep from flinching when D’s thumb brushed over his eye to wipe away the dampness from his lashes.
It didn’t escape D’s notice, and he drew Rogier close. Rogier went willingly, maybe desperately. How had he ever managed without D? It’d been miserable and agonizing, the loneliness like a shield but also a blade, only that blade was turned inward to his own throat. It was so hard to be alone, but so much harder to be anything but a vague and friendly presence at the fringes of other lives, so much harder to risk exposure and the inevitable pain that came with it when someone took advantage of that exposure. You don’t deny anyone except yourself, came the shade’s exacting whisper unbidden and he shivered in D’s embrace.
“Tell me?” D asked after a moment, one arm wrapped around Rogier’s waist and another around his shoulders, hand cradling a dark head to his pale neck. Rogier thought wildly that he could tear D’s throat out with his teeth and the hunter would never see it coming, would never suspect he even had fangs sharp enough with which to bite.
“Lately, I dream sometimes that you kill me,” Rogier said. It took so much effort to dredge up his fears and his worries and his innermost thoughts that were supposed to be only for him. He’d given them to D, risking so much, expecting them to, in time, be turned against him. This was how the world worked. If you gave someone access to sensitive places, they would delight in using them to destroy you. It was best to deny these places existed altogether, to smile politely, to tell the right jokes on cue, to deflect all attempts at invasion with well-placed jests or parrying questions to turn the focus away again.
But always D seemed to defy Rogier’s expectations, his patience and love as enduring as the earth beneath their feet. “Never,” D whispered to him.
“Even should you come to despise me some day?” Rogier asked, halfway between light-hearted compulsion to avoid the real answer and a desperate, all-consuming need to know the truth.
“Never,” D repeated like steel. Rogier felt lips drop to the crown of his head. “I love you.”
He didn’t know how it could be that he craved and feared something all at the same time.
8
Rogier was not prone to panic. When overloaded with terror, he instead simply shut down. He’d see himself from afar, like a spectator in his own life, and may even think, Glad I’m not that guy! And then somehow, his body endured what was necessary, and then, survival.
This was not an option when the reason for the terror required more precise and definite action from him. In this instance, it was D, impaled on a blade whose wielder Rogier had failed to stop in time, the volley of glintblades landing just shortly after D staggered to his knees. And so that panic welled in him, and there came that struggle: to let himself drift away like a leaf tossed to an uncaring breeze so that the fear would be distant and unfelt, or to stay and endure it.
D spun and cut down the undead corpse that had stabbed him, his sword falling like a stone and there was the dry-wood sound of bones rattling together. Blood trickled over silver armor from the place it’d been rent by a powerful blade, and he struggled to climb to his feet.
Rogier gripped the hilt of his rapier tight. Precisely severed the vertebrae in the neck of another undead. Its head hung briefly by a thread of brittle, dry skin before gravity finished the job, pulling the weightier skull to the earth. He reached D with that headless corpse lumbering aimlessly after him. “Come on,” Rogier told him, squatting low and yanking D’s arm over his shoulders.
“We finish what we started,” D ground out as the Mariner’s horn called on.
Rogier didn’t waste time arguing. He dragged D out of the swamp. Focused on his hands holding D’s arm tight over his shoulders, felt the weight he bore, the way D’s feet stumbled at the earth. Oh he was going to die, he would die, and that was unbearable, step back, just step back and let it happen to someone else-
He bit his own tongue until he tasted blood. Squeezed his arm around D’s waist tighter. “Come on,” Rogier said again but if pressed, he could not tell who he was saying this to. D’s weight fell heavier against him. Desperately, Rogier scrabbled at something to put distance between himself and the terror without fleeing entirely. “Making me do all the work, I see,” Rogier said airily.
“South,” D muttered, voice becoming slurred. The blood was soaking into Rogier’s clothes, trickling over his side where D was pressed against him. “Church.”
Rogier dragged him to it, babbling mindlessly all the while, stupid jokes and meaningless observations, and the blood, so much blood on them both, how could they ever find what lay beneath? D fell totally limp about ten paces from the church and Rogier gritted his teeth, straining every muscle in his body to pull that weight faster.
“Please,” he said though he didn’t know to who. Marika’s carven face looked down at them impartially as Rogier stumbled into the ruins. He guessed at where the grace may lay, the warmth and healing glow lost to him but not D, never D who was so faithful, loyal, steadfast, sure. “Please,” Rogier whispered again and his vision blurred, unfocused, he wanted to crawl inside himself and ignore everything, this hurt too much, he was tired of everything hurting so much.
He peeled away the layers of D’s armor, pulled off the helmet to reveal a face that was even paler than normal, slicked with sweat. His fingers fumbled with buckles and straps, tearing off gauntlets and pauldrons, the chestplate with the silver bust of a delicate figure that lovingly embraced its protector. Beneath the armor and hauberk, the brown padded cloth of D’s gambeson was soaked red, the stain spreading from its epicenter below his ribs and his side. Rogier untied laces and clasps, unbuttoned a rough linen shirt.
D’s pale skin was streaked red. Rogier tore at his own cloak, tearing it into strips. He dumped his waterskin onto D’s ribs, tried to thin out the blood so he could more clearly see the wound. He crumpled the cloth in his hand and pressed hard against the bleeding. D still breathed, and Rogier tried to do the same. It would be alright. The grace would give him its vitality, coax its faithful servant back to life, even if it was a recusant who offered him up and begged for his healing to begin with.
Rogier settled more fully into reality as the bleeding slowed. D would be okay. He’d seen worse. He laughed grimly at his own foolishness, the panic and fear far off humiliations. With steadier hands than before, he cleaned and stitched the wound. “What would you do without me, hm?” Rogier muttered to his unconscious lover. Gently, he brushed pale hair away from a sweat-slicked face, then let his knuckles linger on D’s cheek. “You’ll be alright, won’t you? Then you can admonish me for dragging you here instead of killing the Mariner. And I can tell you that you owe me your life now, as if we don’t owe each other so many times over. I’ll hold it over your head until you kiss me to shut me up. How does that sound?”
“Why does he love you?”
Rogier gasped and jerked at the voice, D’s voice but not. Before he could turn to reassure himself that no one was there, that this was just some illusion brought on by distress, he was shoved down and pinned to the earth beside D. A hand tangled in his hair, yanking at it and arching his back unnaturally, painfully. He scrabbled at the hand holding him, tried to shake off the weight on his hips. Beside him, D lay totally oblivious, vulnerable.
“What do you give him that I can’t?” the voice snarled in his ear, and the hatred was so pure that Rogier felt strangely ashamed.
“Let me go!” Rogier snapped, lashing out with a fist blindly. He couldn’t turn enough to see the man on his back but he knew it was that feral shade.
“I can not because he can not!” the voice snapped back. The shade groaned out his rage and Rogier’s eyes flew wide when teeth sank into his neck. Hips ground down against his body and terror surged anew, refueling his struggle. He tore at the hand in his hair, fingernails drawing blood but not enough to throw his attacker off. He kicked and tried to find purchase, tried to push himself up, but the body on him draped itself over him heavily. Another hand was at his throat, holding him fast while lips mouthed at his jaw.
“Please,” Rogier begged. “Don’t do this.”
“I have to. We’re the same,” the shade whispered. Rogier cried out when a wet tongue circled the contours of his ear. The shade gasped and ground its hips against him again. “He loves you, I don’t understand, I don’t-” Another moan and Rogier gritted his teeth and struggled, smashing his clenched fists into the man’s ribs again and again.
The shade snarled and hit him in the back of the head. The world spun before it dimmed. When he returned to reality, his pants were at his ankles, and it hurt, it was frantic and desperate and painful and he cried out. The shade moaned and thrust into him more fiercely, one hand at Rogier’s throat, the other pinning his wrists above his head. “I hate you,” the shade gasped. “Whore, apostate, heretic, seducer, I hate you-”
Rogier tried to squeeze his legs shut but couldn’t close them for the body between them, grinding relentlessly against him. He tossed his head as a mouth pressed to his throat again. He trained his eyes on D’s unconscious body beside him, and begged, “D, please wake up, please-”
This enraged the shade, and he fucked Rogier harder, painfully, breeching too deeply and agony stabbed its way into Rogier’s guts and he cried out. A strong hand closed on his throat and squeezed. “You don’t deserve him,” the shade hissed against his lips. “You’ll sully him, destroy him, ruin him, ruin us.”
“Why are you doing this?” Rogier asked desperately as tears squeezed from his eyes.
“Because I can,” the shade answered, tongue skimming over his cheek. “Because you let us.”
“Not you,” Rogier answered raggedly, trying to escape that warm tongue on his skin. Again he sought D and tears welled in his eyes anew. D was asleep, unaware. Rogier strained against the hand holding his wrists, desperate to touch D, to wake him, but what would that help? He was injured and still Rogier demanded his protection.
“We’re the same! Why don’t you understand? Why does he love you when you don’t understand?” the shade howled and began choking him again. Rogier tried to scream but no sound could escape his tightening throat. The shade pounded into him chanting that question of why over and over, and the world grew distant, tenebrous, something Rogier didn’t really exist in but merely observed. He saw himself laying there, dying, raped by D’s hideous twin, and from so far away, he didn’t have to feel a thing about it and eventually it would all disappear.
9
Rogier woke to crackling flames and warmth. His eyes were swollen from crying and everything hurt, his insides burning and aching, his throat painful, his head full of pressure. D’s red cloak was pulled over him like a ratty blanket, and his own hat was rolled up under his head as a pillow. D was sitting at the fire, staring deeply into it. His armor was removed, and he wore only a clean pair of pants. The wound at his side was raw and red but less inflamed than it had been, and didn’t bleed.
Rogier’s lips parted as he struggled with all of the things he wanted to ask. D’s voice came, calm and even as ever, “Are you alright?”
A laugh burst hysterically from Rogier’s throat and it was agonizing and rough. “You nearly died,” Rogier reminded him.
D turned something by the fire. Some creature skewered through a stick. “But I did not.”
Rogier winced as he tried to sit up. He settled for shifting from his stomach onto his side. He stared unseeing at D and his vision blurred as he lost focus. D’s form became indistinct. He blinked. “Something is trying to kill me, and it looks like you,” Rogier said finally.
D’s eyes did not shift from the fire. “You’re distressed.”
“Because something is trying to kill me, and it looks like you,” Rogier repeated emphatically.
D shook his head. “Bad dreams, Rogier.”
He thought of the hands on his throat, crushing the air out of him, how it hurt now to speak, to sit up, the burning inside of him where that cruel shade took him dry and forceful and heedless of the damage. “I’m hurt,” he said.
“It must’ve happened in the battle,” D explained. His focus was in cooking the little creatures evenly on all sides, turning them all just so one by one. “You probably didn’t notice at first. Because of me.”
“Unless the Mariner stuck his horn up my ass, I don’t think that’s how I got these injuries,” Rogier snapped. How could D think he didn’t know how he was hurt? That he could mistake being raped and strangled for a skirmish with monsters?
“Stop,” D said back, all cold fury and steel resolve and Rogier tried not to flinch but it was so hard after what’d just happened. “You’ve had dreams like this before, and you’re muddling things up. You are distressed, and letting that distress toy with you because you don’t know how to otherwise handle it like a normal person.”
Rogier stared at the frank and brutal assessment, and heat crept over his ears as he flushed with the shame D’s tone wrenched out of him. His body ached, but was that so uncommon after a fight? Maybe he was conflating injuries from battle with his foolish nightmares, like D said. D had never led him astray before, was always honest, grounded. Rogier was the liar, the flighty one, the one who let himself be led wherever an errant impulse may take him. Didn’t it make sense?
He lay his head back down on his hat. Part of him wanted to argue, but the rest thought of D’s angry tone and fear reared its ugly head. You will lose him if you don’t shut up, it said. And it will hurt, very much.
“I’m sorry,” Rogier said finally. He looked at D, and traced the angry red line of the wound at his side with his eyes.
“I’ll take care of you,” D told him. “If you’ll let me.”
“You’re the one who almost died,” Rogier answered.
D shook his head. “Just listen to me,” he said. But he had to know Rogier had never been good at obedience. Maybe that was why D had sounded so sad when he said it. Because Rogier could never be pacified without knowing the truth of things, the answers to questions that were better off never being asked.