[2]
Istvan wears black, as if he’s always in mourning. But Erik thinks of him in shades of red (scarlet crimson vermillion and carmine). To him Istvan is life itself, and life itself is the color of sweet wine, ruddy cheeks in winter, coals glowing warm, fresh bruises from a spar, poppies in the fields, blood to be kissed from a wound.
Istvan believes in nothing past the grave; he swears the saints cut him off a long time ago. He drinks and laughs and shows Erik that to be alive is the only thing worth his worship. When they make love they are two kindred flames, dancing together in the night. When they fight together it is Istvan’s shadow behind him that keeps him safe.
Istvan wears gold, and the brocade filigree he adorns himself with reminds Erik of the sun when it nudges its lip over the horizon, how the golden lashes outline everything still subsumed in darkness. There is something more achingly beautiful in this contrast of light on dark than anything he has witnessed at high noon. The quiet calm on the cusp of dawn is the only time Erik feels at ease in his flesh. It was on some same morning that they first met, when Istvan stepped through the smoke in a flash of glimmering gold, illuminated in the glow of flames.
~
Gonna start posting this Isterik thing in little pieces... still not sure of the full scale or shape of it yet but it basically looks like this: fragments of memory bubbling to the surface in the wake of Istvan's death. Some come in tiny pieces, some in larger arcs. Tentatively titling this 'The Persistence of Memory' and yes I know how pretentious that sounds, lol, don't @ me.
Actually do @ me if you want a way of keeping track of them. I could make a master post ppl could subscribe to maybe? Idk how tumblr works.
OK I have a masterpost for this now:
[The Persistence of Memory]
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A lyric prose story exploring the resurfacing and erosion of Erik’s memories in the wake of Istvan’s death.
[1]
When he considered the trail of blood left in the half-remembered, half-delirious wake of his wretched life, he could see how one might, from afar, recoil in disgust.
But to Erik, every splatter was a painting unto itself, a masterwork of passion and delight within every drop of pain and madness.
Passion, pain, delight, madness. Sick and sicker, the worshipped and the worshipper.
This will be my master post for people to explore the whole thing! Subscribe for updates to it and I’ll keep adding the numbered pieces as they go up.
Also for isterik fans, this has very sharp teeth, so... heads up. I'm not sure I even need to say that, but some isterik enjoyers seem to make them very lovey and cute and that's fine, it's just not this. Is there love? Yes. But a very messy kind.
[cw: manipulation, gaslighting, grooming, grief, dubcon, and everything else isterik]
//
[2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9*], [10]
*9 is a bit too far into some darker isterik themes than I'm comfy sharing on tumblr so you'll have to wait for the ao3 post for that one sorry.
Hello, hello! I return to share what I am working on. This time it's a RIDICULOUS pillory cuckoldry fic where I bring Black Bartosch back! I cannot get enough of that man, nor can I of using him to make Hans and Henry get over their homophobia. It's okay to be gay guys!
Fun fact I wanted to post this for Sensual March as prompt fill 'Witness' but didn't have time to write it.
And last but not least I wanna play a bit of tag... how about @ladystephaniesduck, @rainandhotchocolate, and @exploring-in-space <3
“What part of ‘let me handle the explanation’—”
“Oh don’t start.”
“—was actually so unclear to you?” Hans finished anyway, glowering down at the wooden platform below him as his only view.
Hans chewed at his lip. He was in a vile mood, but he desperately did not want a repeat of the fight they had the last time they were in the pillory. The words Henry had cut him down with. The aching weeks of loneliness that followed. Then again, this time it really WAS Henry’s fault they were stuck here.
High above in the maiden tower the Trosky bells began to chime, signaling the hours. Hans did not bother to count them; the fading pinks of the sun beyond the horizon had long since told him how late it had gotten.
Henry sighed next to him. “At least the last of the onlookers went home.”
“And took their rotten turnips with them, thank Christ.” Hans tried again in vain to shake his hair free of the last of the spoiled vegetable. The smell was cloying and sour in the worst possible way.
A clear, richly toned voice hailed from the encroaching dusk. “You alright there, Henry?”
“Bartosch!” Henry’s exclamation was entirely too cheerful, and Hans felt himself tense on instinct.
//
Bartosch turned his head to the other side and Hans watched Henry catch the man’s eye. A shy smile spread across his lips as he looked at Bartosch and Hans felt all that burning rot in his gut churn anew.
“Henry,” Bartosch said now in a low, near singsong way. “I thought while you were unable to make our engagement due to… well, being tied up at the moment… that I might bring our engagement to you.”
Hans watched Henry’s eyes go wide and surprise crawl across his face into something else, almost like… desire? Then it was gone, replaced by an embarrassed flush of his cheeks. “Bartosch, erm…” Henry’s eyes darted to Hans. “This clearly isn’t the time?” His deep blue eyes were imploring.
“Nonsense,” Bartosch said, standing and going closer to him. He crouched again, but this time he was on the other side of Henry, his face intimately close, that same smug smile playing on his lips. “It’s a beautiful night, dark, quiet, and we have a once in a lifetime opportunity before us. We can’t pass that up.” His dark brown eyes lifted and met Hans’, and Hans shivered in response to it, his body tingling. What was Bartosch talking about? There was a thing that Hans could guess but did not want to even think lest he somehow gave birth to it.
Then, as if it had come unbidden all the same, Bartosch plucked Henry’s chin with his fingers and pulled him into a kiss.
//
“So quiet tonight, Henry…” Bartosch hummed out suddenly, his voice breaking the tension. “Could it be you don’t want to show your lord how much you enjoy this? Need we give him more of a display?”
No. Hans hissed in, mind rebelling from the notion in his horror, his need to disbelieve. His body, wretched cursed disobedient thing it was, trembling with feverish excitement, a sickening need to—Heaven save him—to witness.
Henry, meanwhile, let out a strangled gasp as Bartosch’s boots scraped on the slats of wood, followed by the sound of him tugging on his belt. “We- we shouldn’t.”
Shouldn’t. Not couldn’t, not even a mustn’t. No hint of don’t.
The anticipation was torture.
***
Keep an eye out for the full thing to drop probably next week!! If you toss a comment in here I'll ping you when I post it.
OK I posted a wip of this last night and I’ve tweaked it a bit since the photo I took but it’s actually probably as done as it will ever be now!
I might toss some more depth here n there but its too subtle to catch on camera anyway
Here it is, the KCD #Hansry inspired abstract I’ve been futzing with for over a month! I hated it until about a week ago and then finally had some ideas and started adding the shapes on the right and finally started to have fun with it again!
Erik wakes in the night to the earthquake tremors of Istvan’s shuddering.
“I won’t have you see me this way,” Istvan’s voice is low and coated in nasal fluid. He keeps his back turned and Erik presses his face to the soft skin over his lover’s spine, lets the small ridges fit around his cheekbones.
“Give the pain to me, I’ll hold it for you,” Erik begs of him.
.
When Erik was younger he saw a soldier quit the drink. This must have been close to what that man felt.
Yearning crawled up his neck and buried inside the base of his skull. It slithered down his arms, his legs. His toes would seize at odd moments. His chest had become a rattling cage of writhing tension. And nothing, nothing could sate it. No food, no booze, no poppy-laced drink. It was a cloying need that would not abate so long as Istvan’s fingers shriveled in the earth.
His only recourse was to endure, and that was no comfort at all.
The man had gone three days without a drop of alcohol before he had crawled on his knees through the camp, begging the others to let him have but a sip. Erik had avoided his shaking, grasping hands, shied away in horror at the maddened look on his face. Finally the sawbones had brought him watered wine, and bit by bit the man’s shuddering had eased. The physician told them the man would have seized and died without it.
Night by empty night Erik clasped his shaking, shivering limbs tighter to himself in the lonely hollow of their bed and prayed the same might be true for his sickness.
In his mind he knew he was dying. Yet his body continued to live.
.
The fourth memory was a thump that woke him in a sweat, his mind awake in a racing thread of words.
He killed my parents, Erik had told him.
What? Toth killed your parents?
Henry’s eyes were wide enough to see his lashes fanning around his eyelids.
You could never understand. They were weak. Istvan’s strong—he took better care of me than any father.
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This time @velocitross tagged me and ALSO GO READ THEIR JADDER GHOST FIC RN, RN!
ITFT has officially started to live in permanent spoiler territory but I think I can manage some snippets here... lemme see.
Teaser 1 is a rare Godwin POV! Also I gave Godwin's partner a name (Zdenka) because unlike WH I think women are individualized human beings! Hot take, I know, I know.
Teaser 2 is Henry back on the teasing train, and spoiler alert: this time he's REALLY going to make Hans work for it.
//
Was it his imagination or were the hangovers somehow getting worse? Godwin tried to think back to the last time his skull had rattled like this but couldn’t fathom it. It didn’t help that the uneven road back to Kuttenberg was causing Bibiana to sway herself back and forth on the path. He felt a wave of nausea pass over him and forced it back, sweat prickling his brow.
“Alright there, Godwin?” Capon’s voice entreated from next to him, and he cast a glance the young lord’s way.
“Enjoy your youth while you can, lad,” he groaned, wiping his lips. “As you age the wine starts to punish sooner and with more venom.”
“I’ve heard one’s prick doesn’t cooperate like it used to either,” Hans mused with a side eye.
“Wouldn’t know a thing about that,” Godwin replied back, and smirked. If there was at least one thing he could be grateful for… ah how he missed Zdenka. He wondered how she was faring without him. Thriving, most like. He imagined her stirring a porridge by the hearth, sprinkling in rosehips and berries. Or maybe she was curled up under their favorite tree, drinking white wine and reading a book. So many things Zdenka could spend her time on when she didn’t have a drunken sod to care after.
//
His mind circled the memory of Henry tying his wrists with his belt on their first (well, first real) night together, seemingly ages ago but actually less than a week prior. It itched at his mind restlessly, and he tried to figure out how to make it happen again without being made to ask for it.
Then he audibly groaned as he realized how much Henry would like it if he begged for it.
Henry smirked at his whine and nipped his lip. “Hmm, what’s that for?” he asked, the fucking mindreader.
Hans cast his eyes away, embarrassment making his cheeks so hot he was sure they were bright pink. Henry unhelpfully nuzzled kisses at his neck and ear and started to suck on his ear lobe. “Do you have something you want?” Henry teased coyly, his voice low but so close that Hans felt it vibrate across his skin.
//
WHO TO TAG HM. OK well I'm selfish and jonesing for more Jamuel content (ooh and btw there will be a splash of that in my own fic finally, tyvm) so I'm gonna tag @trueteashoe, @thekittendraws, @nebulaad, and @lilobooms in hopes of seeing/reading some tasty treats from them soon... (no pressure tho!)
Erik watched the bastard boy run, racing to beat the riders to Suchdol’s doors. His battered limbs were already swelling beneath his armor, uncomfortably tight in the clasp of brigandine and mail. He slumped into the mud and looked at his own face in the puddle of water and silt. It was the first time he’d seen his reflection in so long that the last was a hazy memory.
.
“Let me see.” Istvan’s voice is impatient; he waits only a beat before he lifts Erik’s chin himself. His eyes scan the bruising and cuts with the impassiveness of a sawbones.
“It will heal clean.” He nods, satisfied, and presses the cool cloth to Erik’s cheek. Only now do his eyes soften. “You fought well, my pet. Calculated in your brutality, unrestrained when it mattered most.”
The praise takes Erik both above and below the pain. In the center of it is Istvan’s smile.
.
The third memory crashed over him in a wave as he dove beneath the river’s surface, the harsh chill of the water numbing his bruised and aching body, clearing the shame from his brow.
Istvan’s fingers in his hair, scrubbing the filth caked and matted there. Pressing him down into the water while he raged and howled. Breaching again, gasping for air. Istvan’s chuckle, not angry but somehow fond.
Never lose this fire, dear one, he had said, and it was the first time Erik felt cherished.
.
When they dragged him to the infirmary his body was too cold to place in anything but lukewarm water.
Shivering and too dehydrated to speak, he was too weak to push them away when they pried his jaw open to feed him broth.
He wept without tears when they dressed his wounds.
[8] [cw: emotional abuse, manipulation, sexual content (between adults)]
The men laugh at his joke, and he feels a small flicker of warmth settle inside his stomach. They sit together at the wooden table with the large chip in it; there’s a pooled grease stain from the roast pig that had been their victory feast the night prior. Erik lifts his mug to his mouth and over the brim he sees Istvan leaning on the wall, his eyes slits of fire.
.
(more below the cut)
“Speak to me, I beg you. Please.”
It is the third day of Istvan’s silence and Erik would rip the tendons from his arms if only to have Istvan look at him.
Please. He repeats it again and again and he weaves it with his broken I’m sorry’s until they sound like a psalm.
“I should not have sat with them. I won’t do it again. Forgive me.”
Erik crawls in the dirt to Istvan’s boots and he places his cheek on the scuffed leather toe. From here he looks up at Istvan and is graced, finally, with the gaze of the one he loves. Then Istvan upends the dregs of his wine over Erik’s face, drops the goblet to the ground. It makes a clear sound, like a church bell.
“Clean yourself up,” Istvan says before he leaves, and a sob of relief escapes Erik’s throat.
.
When the rage abates at last, he sees the man below him is well beyond even Heaven’s help.
The hollers, the whoops, the goading are all gone, replaced by strange silence. When Erik glances around he sees their faces are stoney. He looks down at the spoiled dead thing he has made and the horror leaches up into him.
What monster am I? It was a sparring match.
“I-I’m sorry,” he bleats. One man takes a step back. Then another. “It was an accident.”
The men mutter, yet neither condone nor condemn. There is only one man allowed to do that here, and he steps forward to lift Erik to his feet.
“You were immaculate,” Istvan purrs to him as he leads Erik away. The others are quietly gathering their comrade’s corpse. Erik tries to watch, but Istvan captures his cheek and turns him to look into his eyes. “Never apologize for killing. They won’t apologize for killing you.”
.
“The men fear me,” Erik mutters to Istvan while they lay together in the bath, legs entangled.
Istvan raises a brow. “Should they not?” His lip twitches and Erik senses this has become a test.
“They should respect me, of course. And fear to challenge me. But the way they look at me is something else—like I’m some sort of… rabid beast.” Erik smoothes the cloth down Istvan’s arm and avoids looking at him, fearing that he has misstepped.
“They don’t just fear you, Erik,” Istvan takes his hand and waits patiently for Erik to look at him. “They abhor you.”
Abhor. Ugly the word, though he recognizes its truth. He has tried not to see it, to convince himself otherwise.
Erik’s mouth wrestles with itself. “Is that… what you wanted?”
Istvan scoffs and his eyes roll. He leans back against the tub and lends some mockery to his tone, “It’s what you wanted, Erik. Or why would you not have controlled yourself?”
Is that true? Had he ever learned to control anything? Had he ever been told to try? Perhaps he was meant to learn it himself—perhaps it should be innate. If he cannot control himself, does that mean he does not want to?
Istvan is smiling at him now, watching him realize these things of himself. “You are a monstrous thing, as am I. And so I alone can love you, because I alone can understand. The creatures underneath your skin, how they yowl and scribble to escape. Here, with me, they can be free.”
Istvan shifts forward, hooks his knuckle under Erik’s chin, and brings them together while he leans close. His tongue flicks out and traces the faint stubble there, then drags along the ridge of his jaw.
“We are the same,” he whispers fervently, hand brushing soft along Erik’s thigh before it pauses. “In all that we desire, in all that we need. We will take what we do not have, and no one can stop us. No one will dare.” Istvan’s palm clasps his leg, and he presses a kiss to Erik’s temple.
Erik trembles at the kiss and presses gently back into him. He dares hope that Istvan will touch him again, that he’ll permit himself to be touched.
When Istvan’s hand finds the stiffness between his legs at last Erik stifles his gratified moan, but lets his eyes implore when Istvan’s dark irises find him.
“The same,” Istvan repeats, and seals it with his lips.
