Nikodem flinched ever so slightly when Malta broke the silence between them once he was finished swallowing the last sip of the tea he’d been offered. He knew that this was what the evening would come to, of course, but as he watched Malta stand and begin to strip down and expose his incredibly built body he began to grow gradually more anxious. Perhaps had they been in a drastically different situation, Nikodem would have been excited by the sight of such a man. While Niko was something new, exciting, and exotic to Malta, the same would have been true for the little southerner. Femininity was prized in Khryoskyra, and so when one was sifting through the population they’d not find many masculine individuals. He’d always found himself more attracted to the rare portion of the population that presented themselves as more masculine, and so he would likely be rather attracted to Malta despite how shockingly different he was from any individual he’d been with in the past.<br/><br/>But, unfortunately, this was the very opposite the opportune circumstances that would be needed for Nikodem to feel any sort of sexual attraction to the massive northern brute. So, when he was instructed to peel his own clothes off he didn’t reply, he merely sad very rigidly on the edge of the cot, averting his eyes from Malta and clearing his throat firmly as he tried to come up with something to say, or do, that could potentially delay the forthcoming coupling. Instead of managing to delay it, however, he seemed to only manage to urk the man who’d be taking him that evening, and he gasped sharply as Malta’s cold hands suddenly gripped his frail body, roughly stripping him of what little barrier he had against the cold and his captor’s prying eyes.<br/><br/>Everything within him screamed to run, to hide, to attempt to cover himself up with the furs laid out upon the cot at the very least. But despite his most base instincts threatening to overwhelm him, Niko simply sat upon the bed, his eyes trained down onto the floor and his arms hanging limply at his sides. His mind wandered back to a time similar to this, when he was much younger, but in just as vulnerable of a position despite the fact that he was still safely within the confines of his home land. His scar was nothing more than a freshly stitched wound then, and he’d been but a boy despite society having labeled him old enough to fend for himself amidst this slums. Despite those two factors, however, men had still hungered for his body. They’d drug him in off of the streets, promising warmth, care, and kindness, and Nikodem had foolishly believed their sweetly whispered promises. In exchange for their kindness, they’d claimed he needed to provide them with certain services. He shivered at the memory of cool hands grabbing him sharply, pinning him to a soft surface and ripping the cloth barriers from his body.<br/><br/>The next thing he knew he was being jarred from his memory by a pair of material hands lifting him from the cot as though he weighed nothing, only to deposit him down in a more vulnerable position. Niko was on his knees, his legs tucked underneath him at an uncomfortable angle and his face buried down in the layers of pelts, he was set up in a prime position for Malta to take him, and as he sat there, his behind lifted into the air, he resigned himself to the night. Niko’s fingers curled into the surface beneath him firmly, his eyes screwed themselves shut and his teeth clenched down onto a pelt beneath him. There was no changing it, and though he knew he wasn’t going to enjoy it why would he attempt to fight it?