"You mustn't dream like that while I'm with you. The last thing I want to do is use force against my own dear partner, even if he is out of his mind and swinging a shitting sword around."

It must be a tremendous effort, being so handsome and so condescending at the same time.

"I didn't try for it to happen," Sander grumbles from his prone position, but the thought of such a thing sends a cold edge of dread stealing into his soul -- or no, his guts, it's too meaty and beer-soaked to be anything more ephemeral than that. Hurting Jan on purpose was one thing, but hurting Jan by mistake? The thought is enough to make a big man like Sander quail. He didn't set out to dream of Belgians, or of limitless soaking blackness beneath a starless cover, it only happened. Take things as they come, that's what they say.

"Well, I don't care how it happened or how you brought it on, only that you don't let it happen again. That's what matters to me."

Jan binds his ankles together with prim efficiency, coiling the rope in trim rows and wiggling a finger beneath the wraps to bring in another knot. Sander hates the interruption in the otherwise pleasing pressure, and snarls at him a little to hurry it up, but without much passion in it. He's on his bad side now, all right, and Jan is going to make this slow and excruciating as a means of discipline -- slow and boring, more like.

Behind Sander's back, that's where he likes to be, with quick access to the kidneys and the spine and the knobbly bone at the back of the neck all ready to be clocked with a rock in a knotted hood or a handy stave. Still, the touch of him makes him quicken and swell -- his erection grinds against the rough floorboards. Knees bent, ankles tied, and all those rough raw coils of rope spanning his naked skin -- his hairy ass is stripped bare to the air, and anyone bursting in on their bedchamber unannounced would get a hell of a fright. (They'd get more than that from Jan, no doubt, who goes about these things with a sharp knife to hand.) These games are a reward for his long-suffering patience, as much as they're a punishment for his gabbling about fishy-smelling Belgians.

"Shame on you, carving up a host of innocent unfortunates." Jan is teasing him now, giving him a smack on the trembling thigh, but the humor of it is lost on Sander in his current position. He'd rather get down to business, and the feeling of warm hands on his naked flesh is more torment than comfort.

"Innocent they weren't," Sander croaks. "Lecherous old devils, every one of them."

"Mm," Jan says. He doesn't sound particularly interested. "You never hear about lusty lepers. But they must have done something to deserve their fate, being cursed in the eyes of God. Bits dropping off and all."

It couldn't have happened like that -- they were only men, repulsive beggars all but men nonetheless. It hadn't been the first time getting laid out on his face for someone else's enjoyment -- a luckless shit alone on the road learns to beware kindly old souls with a spare seat on the market wagon reserved for a pair of skinny young hams, or understaffed gangs of bandits with plans to take the joining dues out on your ass. He's alert to these things, same as he's attuned to ambushes and pocket-pickers, but they're commonplaces in this great whore of a country, the cost of walking around. What happened down below --

It couldn't have happened the way he remembers it, in fragments of memory Sander is too scared-shitless even to verbalize to himself, let alone Jan -- the memory of a slippery tongue thick with saliva forcing its way into his mouth, and the way it had bristled with sinewy muscle when his teeth tried to force down to bite and expel it. Eels don't have tongues -- though maybe neither do lepers, he's almost certain -- and they certainly don't have cocks. On his front, just like this, but with slippery muscle pinioning him in place instead of coarse rope -- the weight of wet bodies, wet writhing bunching bodies slim as twigs or thick as a man's arm, and the memory of choking on thick salted slime, brackish and marine like cold come. Silent groaning between clenched teeth, as a slippery black elver creeps up his chin, probing into his nostril like a wayward finger--

Sander sobs and groans. Jan licks his ear and ties another knot.

And killing them, that had -- it had been satisfying, yeah, but no more than was fair, after being treated that way by such ugly cuntfuckers fresh out of the jaws of victory on the gallows. Telling Jan about it made it seem like a guilty tale better kept secret, something he'd spilled, something that had escaped him in the telling. Perhaps to Jan it was faithlessness.

Sander jerks back to the present, blinking away memories of Belgian tongues and cocks like a man swallows down a bitter taste in his mouth. Jan is teasing him now -- dragging a length of the rough hemp over the skin of his throat, making him shiver and curse.

"This is for you, Sander. Aren't you paying attention?"

His balls are tight and aching already, and they beg for a good squeeze, or the heel of a boot pressed down just so. No, that's not right, the only thing for him is good simple rope. One time in the backroom above a blacksmith's forge Jan had twisted a silk cord so tightly around the velvety nuthead of Sander's cock that he'd spunked blood -- he'd come harder than ever before with the enthusiasm of a man in exquisite pain. After he'd just about spunked out all the moisture in his body, Jan had held him, he had stroked his matted hair and called him a big strong lad and lots of other complimentary terms beside. Sander had wept. It had been pretty fucking nice.

Creaking, the slip of cloth, the shifting of a man's weight on an uneven floorboard -- Jan's weight, not Sander's own. What in Christ's wounds is he doing back there? What busies his hands? Because he's certainly not fingering Sander with them, no matter how attractively he parts his hairy asscheeks. Busy hands, doing some busy work as their owner hums in concentration. It's these little habits Jan has that would drive another man crazy -- but Sander has been crazy from the get-go, so he grunts his impatience, rutting his hips against the rough floorboards.

"What's the matter, did your cock fall off? I thought you were going to fuck me," he says, twisting his head around as far as he can

"Still," Jan snaps, one word delivered like an order. Sander lies still.

What does this man think he is, some snot-nosed linkboy? Still, still. Sander swallows his stroppiness and presses his eyes shut. It's hard to think of an articulate complaint with the maddening coils of rope exerting their pressure on him -- strangling bands of roughness wrapped tight around wrist and ankle, thigh and crotch, and only growing tighter. Naked and exposed, he can feel every hair on his body prickling, every chest hair and beard hair and pube tingling with sensation like an extra tiny prick ready to be rubbed. Whose was the first prick Jan ever squeezed -- some bastard playmate's? Some serving-boy's? His father's? Once he's buried in him to the root Sander will have to ask him all about it.

A tight line snakes over his head, snagging his nose as it slips down to tighten just below his jaw -- it snags in with frightening force that makes him spring instantly to attention, rock-hard and confounded. The jab of sudden constriction yanks an involuntary noise out of him before all potential for noisemaking is cut off in one -- Jan jerks the garotte upward, slicing at the skin like a barber's knife.

All his joints spasm, sending him roiling in pain with a hard-on that could cut glass -- Jan's weight presses on his bent back, and he twists the handle fiercely with both elbows gouging into his spine. This isn't fun, this isn't slow steady torment, it's too much like a knife in the belly on a dark quayside -- too much like assassination. But if Jan stuck a knife in his belly Sander would probably ask him to fuck the hole. That's the kind of hold this man has on his balls and brains alike.

Regardless, it's not right -- not what they agreed, not slow fun with rope but sudden, striking panic into even the meatiest of hearts. They have played at death and resurrection a hundred times, a thousand times, but the feeling of strong fingers is a damn sight far from a thin cord knotting somewhere above his Adam's apple. Sander twists his arms in their bonds, scrabbling at the knots in the next best thing to prying that damned cord out of the furrow it's carving in his throat, but all he gets for his effort is a few bleeding fingers and less air in his lungs than before. His jerking and grunting takes on a tone of real panic.

"Ssh, ssh, ssh," Jan hisses against the back of his matted head, as his field of vision tightens -- his lungs heave and tighten, not for air alone but for something to say, something that will redeem. Sander grinds his hips against the ground, desperate to get himself off one last time with Jan's bent body pressing him into death like a turned-back bowstring, but all he gets for his efforts is a splinter in his cockhead and a worse case of blue balls. Go figure, he's going to die horny.

Sander is dragged to the muted edge, with the hand of God picking him up by the fucking scruff like a puling newborn kitten -- he is dying this time, really and truly popping his clogs while tangled in the arms of the man he loves, naked as the day he dribbled out of his mother's cunt.

Being dead isn't so bad, but it's less fun than getting there had been -- waiting in silence for Judgment Day or something worse. He comes around with a blazing band of pain from beard to collarbone, and a sodden mess beneath him on the floorboards cooling to a sticky adhesive -- for once only spunk, from the smell of it, and none of the more unsavory bodily emissions.

Sander strains to turn his head, still breathless, and regrets it; his vision returns to a degree sufficient to make out Jan kneeling beside him, codpiece unlaced and cock in hand. He works at it lazily, as if he's not certain if Sander's come around yet -- when the clearer details return, he can see the jizz is already running down from the ruddy head, and Jan's grip on his member as he works it is more gestural than purposeful. Plenty of time to finish spunking and catch his second wind. No doubt he would have fucked him bloody, if not for the rope getting in the way -- piss-poor planning, that.

Or at least Sander would hope so. Being alive is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he'll still dream of slimy caresses, and their unenviable task still lies ahead of them. On the other, he'll live to know the touch of rope again and to be fucked back to consciousness by the man he loves. Sander lurches in his bonds, by way of experimental muscle-testing, and turns his head back again.

Jan rolls him over to a position that relieves the weight on his ribcage, but this is a mixed blessing -- being able to breathe once more means forcing air past the damaged pathway of his throat, and a surge of pain rises afresh, sharp enough to bring him close to vomiting. In such a position, a man might die from careless chundering, and a man like Jan would let him.

Sander produces a foul guttural rattle, like the sound that a man with a cut throat makes -- not so voluntary as a gurgle, but with a hollow cartilaginous quality, a bloody windpipe being played like a flute. What he means is, I love you. Jan lays the palm of his hand across Sander's face as if he understands.