Imagine you're a knight fighting an enemy knight and as you guys are fighting, you accidentally knock his helmet off to reveal his face. You're just like "oh no he's hot"
UGH what a dream scenario...
you've been rivals for long enough to call each other nemeses. you only ever meet in hostility, fully kitted and weapons drawn, each trying to fell the other. you've seldom even heard his voice outside of grunts and growls muffled by his visor and underscored by the clatter of armour and the crash of blades. besides the shape of his armour—something you have well-memorised, every plate and hinge and link of chain—what you know best of him is his smell. grappling on the ground, hitching and panting, your own faithful armour working against you in the tight fray as it's pressed hard into your soft flesh, you're overwhelmed with the smell of him. his sweat, his blood, the metal and oil of his armour, the faint homely scents trapped in the linen and wool of his gambeson peeking from between his plates in his vulnerable spots—the scent of leaves and needles of trees from some other place, traces of herbs from poultices gathered and administered elsewhere, smoke and dirt and musk and wet hair and him. in your crimson violent dreams, you notice his approach from smell alone before he appears. in your most fitful, you imagine him weak, kneeling, defeated before you, barely still upright. when you plunge your sword into his neck and release his head from his wretched shoulders then, though, there is nothing underneath, a vacant suit of metal. you wake up feeling utterly empty, too.
once, when you cross paths, blades are quickly lost to the grass in the fray. you rush each other, colliding with a great metal clang that makes your ears ring. you're grappling then, rolling and pressing each other into the soft earth. you strike when you can manage a free elbow, knee, or hand, both fumbling for your daggers as you try to wrestle a hold on the other, grabbing and pushing and squirming. the breath is crushed from you when he flips your positions and straddles you, delivering a blow with his gauntlet to the side of your head. you see stars and lose some of your strength, the world tilting around you. you can hardly breathe, your adrenaline-quickened huffs condensing on your visor, your helm hot as an iron bull. he takes a moment, whether to catch his breath or simply to indulge, as he pulls your dagger from the holster at your hip, leaving his own tucked away at his back. icy panic grips you. you throw your hands up before he can decide which of your soft spots to position the weapon upon, pushing back his dagger-arm with all your might, but he has the advantage in the contest. it inches closer to you, the tip lining with your throat, seeking the lower edge of your visor. you're gasping in breaths, hitching and straining, and a plea for your life sits on your tongue. you're reeling, desperate with that ancient human drive to fight death by all means possible, and with a sinking despair you realise were you to be slain here, you'd die an anonymous death, he your unknown end.
you gasp out your own name. he falters, only for a second, but the advantage is enough to push his arm back a little more. he does not relent, still looming over you. his reaction is a mystery behind his visor, but suddenly he is not pressing as hard against you. you gasp in a few breaths. you ask him his. please, sir, if you have any honour, you'll give me your name before you etch mine into a grave marker.
he doesn't respond. he tilts his head to the side a little, as if curious. in a surge of audacity, you summon all your remaining strength and throw your arms at him, bucking and kicking, trying to knock him off of you. he wrestles you back, catching your wrists with his empty and dagger hands both and pinning them to the ground by your head, fighting back as you struggle. you thrash for your life. he uses his whole body to try and jostle you still.
in all the scrambling, his helm is knocked loose, twisting some, and then falling from his head altogether and clanking to the ground next to you.
you look up at him through the slit in your visor and the haze of the fight. you see the burn of passion in his eyes, the sheen of sweat painting him, the cut of his jaw and the curve of his nose, the shape of his mouth as he pants, the mess of his hair, the evidence of his life lived upon his skin, peppered with fresh cuts and bruises. you spot a scar on his right cheekbone, faded just the right amount to be from that time you struck him with the heel of your sword and watched a perfect rivulet of blood drip from his visor. there he is, flesh and blood before you, face twisted in fury but as beautiful as st. micheal in battle, angellic. your nemesis. your knight.
the world stops. you both seize, fixed to each other, frozen in that moment like a statue of theseus and the minotaur. sweat drips from his nose, stained pink from his shallow wounds, and falls upon your gorget. you stare at each other, huffing in the heat of one another's breath. he swallows.
he whispers one word to you, clearer than you've ever heard his voice before, a songbird now free from its metal cage: his name.
when he finally moves, it's his empty hand he draws up and uses to roughly wrench your visor open.