If you haven't read
justira's These Undying Alchemies Of Honor this will be meaningless. This is actually AU of her AU. But still AU of the game. Yes. STFU.
The night is thick - or maybe it's just the tension in the air, hindering every movement Noah makes; he's worried about looking too ill, or too well, or too eager, or too hesitant. His thoughts are thick as well, slowly somersaulting over each other through the viscous haze of his worry.
But he hears the footfall and turns just as Basch reaches out for his arm, and -- fingers on his skin, an inadvertent brush. "I am sorry," Basch says, just as Noah himself says, "There you are," and the silence falls between them again like thick rain.
Eventually Basch laughs. "I hope I did not startle you;" and there are a thousand things Noah could say, because it's chastising criticism and humbling apology in one, and instead he looks Basch in the eye: dead on, hard, in the way he knows unsettles Basch like nothing else can. Noah took - takes - took an inordinate amount of shameful pride in being the thorn in Basch's side.
And now? "I was expecting you," he says, and waits to see what Basch will take it as: arrogance, presumption? "I was hoping," he amends, and Basch's eyes -- flare, but darkly, not like fire-blooming magic at all. Noah cannot help it. His lips quirk into a smirk - his weakness, now, the fact that Basch is endlessly amusing and dear to him even as he is everything Noah wants and loathes and hates and--
--Basch steps forward, and Noah knows the smirk has goaded him into it even as Basch's hands grip his shoulders; his brother's lips descend, demanding, rough, angry and Noah laughs into his mouth even as he kisses Basch back. Basch tugs him into a position and Noah lets himself be pulled, pushed, pushed against the railing of the airship by Basch's warm and solid body, wind tugging Basch's longer hair into a scattering of touch on Noah's face.
Noah reaches up, burying his fingers in Basch's hair, simultaneously holding it back from both their faces and pulling, angling Basch's face so that he can nip his brother's lip; the gasp could be his - it is, in a way, into his mouth, then given back: as Basch's hands run down his bare arms, leaving the fire of his touch and the chill of the night behind.
Noah breaks away, to breathe, or to gasp again, or for something he cannot even say; Basch's low chuckle is a goad in the dim. "So that has not changed," he says, and Noah laughs: his own laugh is harsher, thinner.
"I'd say it has," he says, because he and Basch are no longer the skinny boys in borrowed armor they once were -- they no longer have the excuse of youth, nor curiosity, nor even brotherly love. "Does it matter?"
ALL OF YOU WHO MADE ME LOVE TWINCEST I HATE YOU THANK YOU
HILARIOUS NOTE: PANDORA DECIDED I WANTED TO LISTEN TO JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE WHILE WRITING THIS. LEAST/MOST FITTING MUSIC EVER PLEASE VOTE