After glancing briefly at the flickering time on the watch, the Esper didn't drop Ian or put him down, maneuvering out of the glass shower with Ian still in his arms, bridal style.

  His long legs draped lazily over one arm, but the lack of speech made the tall man appear as a sack of potatoes, leisurely slumping in another's hold.

  Deciding that there was no point in struggling or fighting against a stronger person and that there didn't seem to be hints of future violence, Ian leaned back and enjoyed the view with an indifferent expression.

  He hummed thoughtfully to himself. These were some solid chest muscles—Lucian would've agreed if he was here.

  Lucian.

  His straying thoughts were pulled back for a breath of a second, lingering.

  Lucian's shouting voice echoed in his ears, his name repeated on a desperate, frightened tongue.

  "What are you thinking?" The low voice interrupted his thoughts.

  Ian glanced up impassively, blinking once. "Nothing important to you."

  "Is that so?"

  The Esper loosely wrapped a towel around his waist with one hand, and with every movement his explosive muscles flexed. They were firm. Ian was tempted to give them a proper grope but lamented on the appropriateness of groping a stranger.

  Ian's body was shifted into a more secure position, the Esper's body brushing against his painful wounds as a light groan of pain slipped past him. No positioning could feel comfortable with a large man slotted against a hard body.

  The Esper lowered his eyes, strolling out of the bathroom. "Injured?"

  "A little," answered Ian with disinterest, as if his injuries were another's business.

  They entered the bedroom, blocked by sleek cement walls.

  Two circles ushered moonlight from far above in the ceiling, wrapped in a ring of faint yellow light. The third floor neared the surface—Ian's neck stretched, his pure black eyes fixed on the faraway glimpses of the sky that scattered with speckles of blinking lights.

  The stars.

  Ian shifted, swinging one arm over the Esper's neck as he strained to see them closer, reach them a little sooner. His body pressed tightly against the other, fingers wedged in the groove of the other's next, against a dully beating vein.

  A staircase rang alongside the wall to an upper balcony leading to a high-spec kitchen. The bed, large and circular, sat before the staircase, warmed by the glow of a lamplight.

  Distracted by the skylights that barely revealed anything, but was the closest thing he'd seen to the surface, he allowed his body to be handled as the Esper placed him on the dark grey duvet, overlapping white sheets.

  Ian lowered his chin reluctantly as a knee wedged between his legs, one broad hand pressed against the soft mattress. The other lightly rested over his stomach as the Esper bent down.

  The heat transferred through the layers of fabric as his doctor's coat was unbuttoned, skin separated by one thin layer.

  A slight pressure was applied and Ian didn't move, lifting his eyes. His body reacted with a slight furrow of his eyebrows and a blooming red spread stark against the white fabric from his bleeding wound.

  The hand rested there for several heartbeats, the sound of their breaths overlapping. Finally, Ian grabbed the other's wrist.

  "Keep pressing and I'll bleed all over your sheets."

  "That would be an issue," agreed the Esper mildly, retreating. His heat lingered. "Would you prefer that I change here?"

  Ian looked at him oddly. He drew in his legs, kicking off the leather shoes of unknown origins, and made himself comfortable on the foreign bed. "What kind of question is that?"

  "You seemed pleased to look earlier."

  Ian nodded. "You're not a bad sight. But I don't want to see it if you're offering a strip show to me."

  The Esper smiled, walking towards a mirrored closet at the corner of the room. He draped a simple pair of trousers and a black button-up over his arm. "You prefer peeking secretly?"

  The towel dropped to the ground. Ian blinked slowly, but he didn't turn his head as he watched the powerful contours of the man's thighs, the definition making his already long legs appear longer.

  Like buried wings, the shoulder blades protruded slightly as he twisted his body, pulling his arms through one side and then another.

  The Esper turned around, leaving the top two buttons undone. A droplet fell from his damp hair, running past his sharp collarbones and disappearing into his shirt. In the mirror, every angle of the man lay exposed.

  Ian shamelessly shook his head. "Turns out I don't mind a strip show."

  The Esper's lips quirked, but Ian still couldn't tell what was genuine amusement or a habit formed of lies. He watched the man turn up the stairs to the overlooking kitchen, rummaging through several drawers before returning.

  "You're obedient," remarked the man as he stopped before Ian, holding several bandages in his hand. Your arms."

  Ian lifted his arms. He allowed the man to slip his hand underneath, dragging off the crimson-stained shirt. His stomach wound that had been neatly wrapped was soaked in blood.

  The bandage was slowly peeled away, neither gentle nor cruel, but with practiced and efficient movements that didn't linger. The faint grazes left a searing heat on Ian's skin—an electric spark of energy echoing in his bloodstream.

  It was the curse of a Guide and Esper relationship.

  Sometimes, even if neither party wanted it, they'd feel each other in the grooves of their skin, in the rhythm of their heartbeat.

  Ian wondered what their compatibility would be if a proper test was conducted, without him purposely knotting his energy output to lower his score. He thought it would be both satisfying and miserly if it was high.

  The Esper knelt to get a better position for bandaging the wounds, wiping a damp cloth along Ian's exposed body.

  The Guide admired the view from above when the sharp, slanted eyes flicked up and accurately found the peeking pervert. "You won't pretend to not look?"

  "Why would I? It's not every day I have an Esper on their knees," replied Ian coolly as his arm was lifted and the bandage was pulled and fastened tightly. "Correction. A decent-looking Esper."

  "Are you admitting to being superficial?"

  "Humans are inherently superficial beings. Nobody only falls for personality. If it's not a subjectively good-looking face, then why would somebody want to wake up looking at it every day?"

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Ian didn't have any shame in liking good-looking faces. If he was treated as a commodity, then he would view Espers in the same manner.

  Anyway, it was realistic.

  There was nobody who could remain with somebody they didn't appreciate the appearance of—although that in itself was entirely subjective. But the argument that personality was the only thing that mattered was a silly cafeteria debate.

  The Esper listened, kneeling between Ian's legs, with a lazy expression. Another drop fell from his blonde hair, trailing down and over his moving Adam's apple.

  "You're talkative," he remarked.

  Ian scoffed. "I don't enjoy awkward, disturbingly intimate silences."

  "You like to talk," inquired the Esper, but it came as more of a statement, or an observation.

  "You don't like to listen," replied Ian curtly. "I didn't say that. If anything," he continued, and didn't know why he did, but perhaps it was in the insignificance of this man's existence twined in discomfort that prompted. "I like words more than talking."

  The lazy older brother had been rough around the edges, irrational, and frightened most of the children in the facility. His younger sister had been the opposite, a drop of sunlight caged in darkness, the closest thing to day they'd known.

  His sister, Ian thought distantly, with an explosive curiosity bound to uncover cracks buried by the base. She yearned for so much knowledge beyond the walls, beyond current civilization.

  She treasured words of lost individuals, thought and languages like nothing else.

  "Words," repeated the Esper in a low drawl. His hand pressed against Ian's parted thigh, tightening the bandage. "Not something I'd take you to be interested in."

  "You'd be delusional to consider your detached assumptions as fact. I don't take you for somebody who'd understand the idea either."

  "Isn't that an assumption?"

  "An opinion."

  "That's not the same?"

  "Language is subjective," said Ian simply without any desire to explain further.

  In the dimly lit room, he sat there, both tense and relaxed, a contradiction of two opposites that was both irritating and confusing.

  The Esper's grip pressed harder, a slight pressure applied, but the Guide didn't even glance down, as if unconcerned of all the ways he could die in that room.

  "Why don't I give you a word," suggested the Esper for reasons unknown, as if contributing to Ian's hidden treasure chest could allow entry to his mind. "A word that you haven't heard."

  There were many, and Ian lowered his gaze with interest.

  Ian thought he should have been frightened—but a strange, eerie calm had settled his shoulders. In this cement luxury room, designed to house the highest-ranking Espers, there knelt one between his legs of the highest caliber.

  That wasn't necessarily a good thing.

  Ian could feel the heaviness in the air of the Esper's seeping energy dying the surroundings in dark, murky static. He was like a box filled with cracks, stuffed too full of things he couldn't contain.

  Terrible, devastating things—things that could usher calamity to the world.

  "Don't beat around it. Give it to me."

  The Esper moved, taking his hands into his. Ian's gaze dropped again, allowing his hand to be fiddled and toyed with.

  "Kalopsia." The deep voice wrapped around every letter in sharp pronunciation. "The delusion of things being more beautiful than they really are."

  Ian laughed, a short breath of sound. "Like you?"

  "Not like this base?"

  "Both," smiled Ian acidly as the hand continued to play with his, pressed against his palm. "Like you. Less beautiful than you appear to be."

  Without waiting for a response, he relaxed and for the first time in many years, stopped resisting the entanglement of life energy. He welcomed it, soothing the sharp, jagged corners, guiding it into tranquility.

  The Esper paused, tightening his hold around Ian's hands. "You can guide normally."

  "I never said otherwise." Ian frowned, feeling his spirits deflate with the stream of energy being leeched out of him. "You're a goddamn parasite—is there an end to how much energy you're going to leech from me?"

  The Esper was unbothered, tugging him forward when Ian attempted to pull away. "I haven't had a guide remain conscious for this long in a while."

  "I'm not a charging bank."

  "Your actions here prove otherwise."

  The Esper gestured towards their hands and Ian scowled. "I'm trying to get in your good graces."

  "Why? What is it you're aiming for?"

  Ian felt a wave of dizziness—it was abnormal. He'd experienced certain activities with various Espers, but he'd never been drained to this extent. The person before him was a bottomless well of poison.

  He swayed slightly and the Esper caught him, pulling him into his body with their hands still interlocked as he stood, moving to lean against the bed's headboard.

  Ian's vein throbbed irritably. However, his body was tired and he resigned to leaning into the Esper's chest, stabbing his chin into the crook of the other's shoulder.

  He hesitated. How much could he tell this stranger?

  Everything? Nothing? Bits of truth and bits of lies? He had no intention of trusting this person—but that lack of trust was the very thing that made the Esper reliable.

  Ian's legs straddled the man's hips, bent on each side. He pulled away.

  "I want to reach the Center Tower."

  The tower that stood in Zone 0, was a beacon of hope and representative of the base's strongest force. There was a person there that Ian wanted to find. It wasn't his ultimate or main goal, but it was one of them.

  That person who remained bright in his distant memories. It was foolish to expect that person to remember him, but he had hope.

  He wanted to believe that there was another person out there who remembered her. Her—the intelligent, wondrous, and the beautifully kind—his sister.

  His sister died in a Rift many years ago.

  Ian had many suspicions about her death, and her strangeness leading up to them, but he lacked answers. All he had was burning resentment of the system that forced her participation, ensuring her demise.

  If that person who said they were from the Center, the child of a high-ranking family, had the power to access the records of what happened that day—

  Ian didn't know what he would do.

  All he knew was that for years he'd harboured simmering anger, that the rage coiled in his stomach and scratched the inside of his skin in reminder. Vengeance wasn't always sweet or satisfying, that didn't stop him from wanting it.

  "The Center?" The Esper flipped Ian's hand over, pressing on his fingers. "You won't reach it as you are. Your only opportunity would be the ceremony for the top-ranking Guide-Esper teams."

  "Ceremony?"

  "Once a year. A farce to broadcast a reminder to the base that they are protected by the strongest."

  Ian scoffed. "So it's our job to play mascots too."

  A hand made its way to his bandaged waist, resting on the uninjured portion lightly. Ian glanced down for a second before looking back up, the warm lampshade casting an illusion of comfort.

  "Presently, you're nothing more than a smear of the wall," mused the Esper quietly. "The government chooses its most valuable resources—the you right now, are you worth anything?"

  Ian opened his mouth and closed it, displeased. There was nobody who knew how much he was lacking more than himself.

  The hand on his waist pressed firmer. "I don't work with inexperienced fools. If I need relief from the degeneration of energy, I have plenty of options. Tell me, reckless Guide, why would I take an infant that's never seen the sun into a battlefield?"

  He accurately assessed Ian's unspoken desires. Indeed, he wanted an Esper that could bring him to the Center—and if acknowledgment of his abilities was key, then he needed to team up with somebody powerful.

  "My name isn't Guide, it's Ian." He hesitated. " And because I passed your game."

  "Game? Not test?"

  "No." The black eyes settled, hesitation dissipating. "It's all a game for you. This. What I do next. You're not hoping for my success or failure."

  There was nothing real or genuine in those cold, blue eyes.

  "Is that how it appears?"

  A smile. Perhaps some could find it enchanting or charming, some could fall into the illusion of magnetism.

  Ian narrowed his eyes and suddenly leaned forward, tugging the Esper towards him as his lips parted, pressing against the other. There was no resistance as the Esper smiled, opening his mouth as he allowed Ian's relentless attack.

  Their breaths intertwined, bleeding into each other, melting into the endless pool of energy that knotted their scents together.

  Intimacy between a Guide and an Esper was more than sharing warmth; it was the direct penetration of energy, and comfort on the deepest levels.

  He pulled away gasping, a heat flushing his cheeks.

  Ian stared at the now disheveled man underneath him, his calm breath a touch ragged as his damp hair tangled, mused by the movements. The cold eyes regarded him with scrutiny.

  "Bet on me. Bet that I won't become a boring game to watch." Ian's shoulders rose and fell. The Esper before him saw him as something lower, something insignificant. Less than a toy.

  It wouldn't stay that way.

  "Bring me back to the surface."

  It was a single demand—one that he had no right to make. But his chin remained set, body stable and the mist that had covered his eyes from his breathless actions served as a reflection of determination, settling over the pure black.

  He didn't need the Esper's affection or respect, although he had a gnawing desire to be acknowledged by this empty gaze.

  Ian hated Espers—it was discriminatory, but the majority he'd met weren't kind or honest. Some participated in terrible cruelties, and for the raised Guides whose purpose was to meet those demands, he had no good opinions.

  This Esper was no different. Arrogant, superior—but strong.

  Undeniably so.

  Ian had a violent desire to trample over his self-assurance and indifference.

  The Esper let out a breath of a chuckle, his lips moistened by Ian's earlier assault. "I'll concede, but I won't enter a Rift with you."

  "That—"

  "Six months. Become somebody I'd have to wait in line to stand with."

  In that lonesome room with four standing cement walls, allowing the faintest glimpse of starlight far above, two unequals made an agreement. Without affection and without trust, only anticipation bound the fragile contract.

  The Guide stared steadily ahead. "Fine. Tell me your name, Esper."

  Only later would they understand the significance.

  The Esper smiled coldly. "Victor."

  Only later would humanity understand that one meaningless evening—

  —was the birth of the first destruction Guide.