When the moon showed the most of its face that it could without shying away bashfully, Esidisi was happiest, it seemed. It was not the sort of shrill, numb joy of domination Kars was familiar with, but rather some sort of peace derived from the varying 'moods' of nature. This welled up a shifting unease in Kars' gut, not enough to effectively invade his thoughts, but just enough to tug at his eyes until they squinted and at his lips until they quirked coldly.
And since their evening strolls had become routine (away from Wham and the child that would, thousands of years from then, be called 'Santana', of course, those children would only be good for interrupting their conversations at the 'delicate' age they were at), Kars only became all the more aware of his companion's increasing cheeriness during these brighter evenings and cold seasons, when the chill was just enough to pierce a man's heart and move it gently without shaking it too violently. And this cheeriness led to more and more openness on Esidisi's end, to Kars'… Not disturbance, but bemusement.
He would always stutter before he spoke, and stutter was all he did sometimes. With a broken "Aa—" or "Whe—" sound pushing from his throat, Esidisi often settled back into silence with a pained smile, twiddling his thumbs like a little girl. Kars found that a little disgusting but he saw no real reason to stop his companion from doing so if it comforted him so - which it clearly did, since eventually he took to doing it nearly all the time.
But on rare occasions that Kars wondered if he should pretend never happened, Esidisi did speak, and he spoke the words of poets and bards dating back even before both of them, and quite frankly that was what was really disturbing. If Kars had known any better he would have been able to tell that Esidisi was shamelessly courting him. But he, who had grown up in a community that didn't care much for breeding, expected Esidisi to think exactly the same way. If he knew any better, he would have known that Esidisi wasn't exactly sure how procreation worked and he wanted to see if it was possible with another man. What an embarrassment, Kars would have thought if he knew any better. But he didn't, and that's what confused him so much about this man he'd trusted his entire life's manifesto to suddenly taking the time to comment on how his hair caught the light of the moon, and how his eyes blazed not with fire, but with ancient blood, and how the reflection of the moonlight on his pale skin was a gift to all living beings.
Kars couldn't have comprehended being able to say such things about anyone else he had ever met. Of course, he was a beauty and he was well aware - rugged men like Esidisi and Wham had little business being called anything but warriors or kings. Which were, of course, beautiful in their own way, but nothing so ethereal and blended in perfection between 'male beauty' and 'female beauty' as a god - an ultimate being. So Esidisi thinking such things seemed natural enough - but to say them out loud took such strange conviction that Kars couldn't quite understand no matter how hard he tried sometimes.
Understanding became much easier, however, as Esidisi's words became bolder and his mannerisms because milder. It was about that time that Kars figured that he ought to start knowing better about these things. Because being told by someone that they wanted to know every inch of his figure came as a much greater shock to Kars than he had thought it would - so great, in fact, that a horrible choking fit found him immediately after the news did. He recovered just soon enough to avoid feeling those heavy, dirty hands anywhere near him, and yet he felt empty and disgusted with his companion's admitting of such weakness. Anyone thinking those sorts of things, he supposed, were normal and fine, but someone trusting so much in themselves to say those thoughts out loud was just an embarrassment to everyone around them. He criticized others for their weaknesses, yet he felt overwhelming relief and luck when he noticed that they were close enough to their burrow for him to get away with a bashful sideways glance and a quick jab at the warrior's pride. "Idiot. Why would you say that?" And the idiot shrugged gently, chuckling nervously as he rubbed his neck. "I don't know," he said, "I thought finally getting that thought out would help me take care of it much better, and I think it will." Idiot.
What did that even mean, anyway? "As strange as it sounds, there are warm times in which I want to know every inch of your body, Kars…" That was, verbatim, what Esidisi said. Right? There was no room for mistaking it when Kars took the statement so dead seriously, keeping it and internalizing it and picking it apart to make sense of it. And all those nights he turned it over, all those times he thought he was losing his mind because the sentiment began appealing to him now, all the times he felt that stupid and savage heat in his face when there was nothing to fear or hate, were all sufficient proof that there was no way he had mistaken the statement. Though it was only really explicitly said once, it stuck with him for months afterwards and Esidisi did not seem ready to allow him to forget it, with all the stupid grins and silly nudging and subtle references he made even when the children were around. That was easily the most distressed Kars had ever felt up until that time - not distressed as in angry, or hateful, but rather vulnerable. Not vulnerable like defenseless prey, necessarily, something much darker than that.
He felt vulnerable like the mouse that wanted more than anything to be torn apart and eaten alive by the cat toying with it. He wanted claws down his chest and teeth marks on his neck, and bruises that would last for days after they were given to him, but the horrible monster that was his pride, as always, kept him just out of reach from what he really wanted.
Little did he know, Esidisi was fully aware of this - but what was the point of spoiling such fun? Though he would never boast or brag about it just as he knew Kars would if their situation was flipped, he took a dark, terrible pleasure in knowing that from that point on, every little 'accidental' nudge or fleeting brush of the skin between the two would bring Kars, the beautiful and terrible god that he was, beautifully and terribly shaking, to his knees.