[ravindra & anson + special guest star!]: something a long time coming
Who: Ravindra & Anson (& Rasmus)
When: August 4th (aka thursday) (aka guin and I finished a log before schedule) (aka witchcraft)
Where: Guard training grounds! :D)-/
Ratings & Warnings: Ravi is a perv! Anson is a shithead! Rasmus is clueless! I cheated and tweaked one of my tags before I posted this!
With only two days to go before the royal wedding, tensions were running high in the Guard. The Royal segment was worried about the appearance they'd have to put in, and the regular segment was worried about keeping the streets safe in the wake of the event. Everyone's stress was feeding into everyone else's and nobody was getting away from it until the wedding was over and done with and things were allowed to go back to normal.
You could see it in the training grounds, especially. The way people carried themselves and their swords was different, they fought better or worse, there was more ferocity in some sparring matches and much less in others. Ravi had come to practice but found himself unmotivated when he saw the others who'd had the same idea. So instead he sat out, on one of the benches around the edges of the practice fields, and watched.
It was when he caught sight of Rasmus that he stopped observing from a technical standpoint and started staring. The warm summer weather had led Ras to do his sword drills shirtless, and Ravi's eyes were drawn to that well-muscled form. So what if Rasmus was the size of a building? So what if he was secretly a minotaur? So what if he was frequently dumber than a sack of rocks? He was beautiful, and Ravi found himself unable to pull his eyes away.
Sparring, planning, baking. The illustrious life of the royal guard.
Anson was no exception to sour attitude that plagued the barracks. He couldn't recall the last time he'd been this tense-- if he'd ever been this tense. He was going to run all of Balfour out of flour by the end of the week at the rate he'd been going, and Rasmus would end up the size of Tyrol on top of that. Not that it mattered, he figured, as he delivered one last savage blow to the target he was in front of. Perhaps if they all starved in time, there wouldn't even be a wedding for them to worry about.
All the training dummies in the world wouldn't help his mood. He glared sullenly a moment at the poor thing, and the straw he'd dislodged, which sat dead in the summer heat; rain for a week and then they couldn't even get a breeze? Of course. That was just Tyrol's luck. He turned away, rubbing his forehead with a curse, when he spotted Ravindra sitting off to one side. He seemed to be staring rather intently at something, and as Anson followed his gaze and found Rasmus waiting at the end of it, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of annoyance.
"Oi, Naran! Why don't you stop staring at Rasmus and actually get some fucking training done?" The words were out of his mouth before he could even think about it, but for once the man did not feel even the slightest twinge of regret about picking on his fellow sergeant.
First thought: Oh god, caught. Second thought: That's Kratochvil, shouting it across the god damn field. Ravi did not care if everyone knew already, he was trying to avoid being public about his preferences, and he did not appreciate having Kratochvil call him out in front of everyone.
Third thought: Kratochvil's equal rank now.
Ravi shoved himself up from the bench and stalked over to Anson's position. He planned out some things to say along the way, some nice angry remarks that Kratochvil would answer in kind, plotting multiple threads of conversation out like chess moves.
But when he got there, what happened was he punched Anson right across the jaw without thought or hesitation. "Shut. Up."
Planning out conversations in advance never worked. Everyone always went off script, anyway.
No script in the world would've prepared Anson for that punch, anyway. It'd been literally years since Naran had shed his propensity for violence-- or apparently, since he had seemed to. The punch had hurt, but it didn't stop from him from looking the shorter man straight in the eye, a sort of lopsided, tense grin on his face.
"Who the fuck do you think you are, Naran? Maybe if you stopped martyring yourself you'd actually get your fucking promotion--" More than anything, though, he was glad for the confrontation. It was nothing if not an excuse-- and he moved forward, a punch of his own aimed at Ravi's gut.
Ravi didn't even answer. The stupid grin on Anson's face just made him angrier, and commenting on his non-promotion? It was on. It had been years since Ravi had gotten into a fight like this, but he still remembered. You didn't go through twenty years of almost daily fights and then just forget the instant you stopped.
It was instinct that guided him. Stress, anger, and instinct. It is an immutable fact that every fight will end up on the ground if it goes long enough, and this one was no different. They were down in seconds, a cloud of violence; Ravi was consumed by the nostalgic feeling of needing to win, despite how badly he was hurt in the process.
It took a few moments for him to notice something was amiss. The usual shouts and curses natural to the sparring grounds were a little more insistant, a little too real, and when he thought to look up and about, trying to find the source of the squabble, he was not the only one surprised to see who it was fighting like schoolboys in the dust.
It took only a few long strides to get him over to the small crowd that was beginning to gather, and he hissed at them as one might a cat, watching them disperse, and then stepped forward again and grabbed one of them by the back of their shirt and pulled him up. The same with the other a mere second later, he had the both of them hoisted up off of the ground as though they were nothing at all.
"You will forgive me, I hope, for this indiscretion," he said, looking with a frown at the both of them, unaware that Ravi had been eyeing him as a starving man does a turkey dinner and Anson had picked up on it. He considered putting them down, but instead held them up a few moments longer.
Anson continued to struggle a bit as he was pulled away from the fray, though it didn't take long for him to stop; he sighed as Rasmus spoke, ceasing his even more futile battle against the minotaur. That sort of size was simply an unfair advantage-- and while later he'd probably wonder exactly what the limits of Rasmus's strength were, for the time being he had far more pressing problems.
He wiped at his mouth, glancing down at the blood on his hand. Anson had never doubted Ravindra's fighting prowess before, but now? It was actually kind of funny. Really funny, actually, he thought as he squinted up at Rasmus. The irony in him being the one to break up their fight was not lost on Anson, and the sheer hilarity of the situation combined with the catharsis of fighting were what led him to laugh. No anger or curses were left in him; instead, he just howled with mirth.
It was ridiculous! A fistfight over a comment that barely ranked above a schoolyard insult, that ended with them suspended in the air? Anson was dimly aware that he was losing it, but mostly, he didn't even care.
WHAT NO HE COULDN'T GET PULLED AWAY NOW HE WAS WINNING oh holy fuck that was Rasmus.
All of Ravi's fight just drained away and replaced itself with shock. Rasmus had come over and broken up a fight that had started because of him and god, he was holding Ravi right at chest level
It was only once the fight had stopped that he realized everything hurt. That was familiar too, but he wouldn't go quite as far as labeling it nostalgic. Barely even realizing the motion, he reached up to swipe his wrist under his nose. His glove came away streaked with red. Thankfully it didn't hurt like a broken nose; it'd just been bloodied. Still, a good hit Kratochvil had landed there.
He wasn't sure how long Kratochvil had been laughing, if it'd just started or Ravi had only just noticed it, but either way he narrowed his eyes at his fellow sergeant. It made Ravi want to sock him again, right in the solar plexus so he'd stop because he wouldn't be able to breathe. "Put me down," he told Rasmus, without looking at him. It was calm and authoritative. Not a request.
"Will you start again?" Rasmus said mildly, looking vaguely offended at Kratochvil's laughter. "It is hardly appropriate for men of rank such as yourselves to be fighting in such a way."
Ravindra wasn't looking at him and Anson was just now starting to wind down, looking like he might be sick from laughing so hard, and maybe swallowing a few pints of his own blood, by the look of his face. Rasmus gave a sigh and let the two of them down, letting them find their balance before he let go.
"Honestly," he said disapprovingly, looking behind him. Where had he dropped his sword?
He couldn't find the words, though the laughter was dying off, and just shook his head fiercely. No, they were definitely done fighting for today. Anson just stood with his hands on his knees, head down, gasping for breath. He coughed once before he straightened up, struggling to keep a straight face and entirely unmindful of all the blood that was beginning to stain his clothes. "Thanks, Rasmus."
Oh, fuck, that was enough to get him to start snickering again... "Sorry to-- interrupt your training." Anson ran both his hands through his hair, still chuckling as he shook his head. Wow. It was all kind of surreal-- but he needed to cut it short, clean himself off and hope he didn't look too battered by Lusine's wedding. Someone would throw a fit, he was damn sure of that. Anson turned, moving towards the barracks without another word to either of them.
"No." Ravi had no intention of getting pulled away by Rasmus again, despite how badly he wanted to wipe the smile off of Kratochvil's face.
When he was on solid ground again, he straightened out his uniform, closed his eyes, and breathed, trying to ignore the laughter going on just a few feet away. It had been at least five years since the last time he'd done that. He remembered now why he'd stopped. Not just that it hurt--it was embarrassing to think something so simple had started it, to remember losing control over such a stupid remark.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Rasmus still standing over them and Kratochvil finally having mostly collected himself. Mostly. He also saw the crowd that had gathered, though the majority of them were trying to pretend they hadn't been gathering at all, and that was the worst part. People had seen it. They would remember this.
Fuck. Why couldn't he just keep his anger under control? He'd gotten so much better at it--why did it have to fail here? Now?
Rasmus could've at least let him win first. It was less embarrassing that way.
As Kratochvil turned and walked off, Ravi threw a glance at Rasmus('s washboard abs--they're eye level okay). "Thank you," he said absently, even though he didn't mean it. He wanted to run off and tackle Kratochvil and start the fight over, but he was smart enough to realize Ras had made the right call.
With that, he turned and left, opposite Kratochvil's direction, to go nurse his wounds and fret over making stupid decisions in front of the entire Guard.
And then Ras stood there, looking confused, while both of them walked away, because where on earth had he put his sword? So he stood there, muscular arms folded in front of his glistening chest, the sweat on his olive skin glinting in the sunlight.
"...what are you looking at?" he asked a few of the other guard who were still lingering, and they scattered at the sight of his frown. It left him in peace to continue squinting across the training grounds, trying to remember what he had done with his weapon.
When: August 4th (aka thursday) (aka guin and I finished a log before schedule) (aka witchcraft)
Where: Guard training grounds! :D)-/
Ratings & Warnings: Ravi is a perv! Anson is a shithead! Rasmus is clueless! I cheated and tweaked one of my tags before I posted this!
With only two days to go before the royal wedding, tensions were running high in the Guard. The Royal segment was worried about the appearance they'd have to put in, and the regular segment was worried about keeping the streets safe in the wake of the event. Everyone's stress was feeding into everyone else's and nobody was getting away from it until the wedding was over and done with and things were allowed to go back to normal.
You could see it in the training grounds, especially. The way people carried themselves and their swords was different, they fought better or worse, there was more ferocity in some sparring matches and much less in others. Ravi had come to practice but found himself unmotivated when he saw the others who'd had the same idea. So instead he sat out, on one of the benches around the edges of the practice fields, and watched.
It was when he caught sight of Rasmus that he stopped observing from a technical standpoint and started staring. The warm summer weather had led Ras to do his sword drills shirtless, and Ravi's eyes were drawn to that well-muscled form. So what if Rasmus was the size of a building? So what if he was secretly a minotaur? So what if he was frequently dumber than a sack of rocks? He was beautiful, and Ravi found himself unable to pull his eyes away.
Sparring, planning, baking. The illustrious life of the royal guard.
Anson was no exception to sour attitude that plagued the barracks. He couldn't recall the last time he'd been this tense-- if he'd ever been this tense. He was going to run all of Balfour out of flour by the end of the week at the rate he'd been going, and Rasmus would end up the size of Tyrol on top of that. Not that it mattered, he figured, as he delivered one last savage blow to the target he was in front of. Perhaps if they all starved in time, there wouldn't even be a wedding for them to worry about.
All the training dummies in the world wouldn't help his mood. He glared sullenly a moment at the poor thing, and the straw he'd dislodged, which sat dead in the summer heat; rain for a week and then they couldn't even get a breeze? Of course. That was just Tyrol's luck. He turned away, rubbing his forehead with a curse, when he spotted Ravindra sitting off to one side. He seemed to be staring rather intently at something, and as Anson followed his gaze and found Rasmus waiting at the end of it, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of annoyance.
"Oi, Naran! Why don't you stop staring at Rasmus and actually get some fucking training done?" The words were out of his mouth before he could even think about it, but for once the man did not feel even the slightest twinge of regret about picking on his fellow sergeant.
First thought: Oh god, caught. Second thought: That's Kratochvil, shouting it across the god damn field. Ravi did not care if everyone knew already, he was trying to avoid being public about his preferences, and he did not appreciate having Kratochvil call him out in front of everyone.
Third thought: Kratochvil's equal rank now.
Ravi shoved himself up from the bench and stalked over to Anson's position. He planned out some things to say along the way, some nice angry remarks that Kratochvil would answer in kind, plotting multiple threads of conversation out like chess moves.
But when he got there, what happened was he punched Anson right across the jaw without thought or hesitation. "Shut. Up."
Planning out conversations in advance never worked. Everyone always went off script, anyway.
No script in the world would've prepared Anson for that punch, anyway. It'd been literally years since Naran had shed his propensity for violence-- or apparently, since he had seemed to. The punch had hurt, but it didn't stop from him from looking the shorter man straight in the eye, a sort of lopsided, tense grin on his face.
"Who the fuck do you think you are, Naran? Maybe if you stopped martyring yourself you'd actually get your fucking promotion--" More than anything, though, he was glad for the confrontation. It was nothing if not an excuse-- and he moved forward, a punch of his own aimed at Ravi's gut.
Ravi didn't even answer. The stupid grin on Anson's face just made him angrier, and commenting on his non-promotion? It was on. It had been years since Ravi had gotten into a fight like this, but he still remembered. You didn't go through twenty years of almost daily fights and then just forget the instant you stopped.
It was instinct that guided him. Stress, anger, and instinct. It is an immutable fact that every fight will end up on the ground if it goes long enough, and this one was no different. They were down in seconds, a cloud of violence; Ravi was consumed by the nostalgic feeling of needing to win, despite how badly he was hurt in the process.
It took a few moments for him to notice something was amiss. The usual shouts and curses natural to the sparring grounds were a little more insistant, a little too real, and when he thought to look up and about, trying to find the source of the squabble, he was not the only one surprised to see who it was fighting like schoolboys in the dust.
It took only a few long strides to get him over to the small crowd that was beginning to gather, and he hissed at them as one might a cat, watching them disperse, and then stepped forward again and grabbed one of them by the back of their shirt and pulled him up. The same with the other a mere second later, he had the both of them hoisted up off of the ground as though they were nothing at all.
"You will forgive me, I hope, for this indiscretion," he said, looking with a frown at the both of them, unaware that Ravi had been eyeing him as a starving man does a turkey dinner and Anson had picked up on it. He considered putting them down, but instead held them up a few moments longer.
Anson continued to struggle a bit as he was pulled away from the fray, though it didn't take long for him to stop; he sighed as Rasmus spoke, ceasing his even more futile battle against the minotaur. That sort of size was simply an unfair advantage-- and while later he'd probably wonder exactly what the limits of Rasmus's strength were, for the time being he had far more pressing problems.
He wiped at his mouth, glancing down at the blood on his hand. Anson had never doubted Ravindra's fighting prowess before, but now? It was actually kind of funny. Really funny, actually, he thought as he squinted up at Rasmus. The irony in him being the one to break up their fight was not lost on Anson, and the sheer hilarity of the situation combined with the catharsis of fighting were what led him to laugh. No anger or curses were left in him; instead, he just howled with mirth.
It was ridiculous! A fistfight over a comment that barely ranked above a schoolyard insult, that ended with them suspended in the air? Anson was dimly aware that he was losing it, but mostly, he didn't even care.
WHAT NO HE COULDN'T GET PULLED AWAY NOW HE WAS WINNING oh holy fuck that was Rasmus.
All of Ravi's fight just drained away and replaced itself with shock. Rasmus had come over and broken up a fight that had started because of him and god, he was holding Ravi right at chest level
It was only once the fight had stopped that he realized everything hurt. That was familiar too, but he wouldn't go quite as far as labeling it nostalgic. Barely even realizing the motion, he reached up to swipe his wrist under his nose. His glove came away streaked with red. Thankfully it didn't hurt like a broken nose; it'd just been bloodied. Still, a good hit Kratochvil had landed there.
He wasn't sure how long Kratochvil had been laughing, if it'd just started or Ravi had only just noticed it, but either way he narrowed his eyes at his fellow sergeant. It made Ravi want to sock him again, right in the solar plexus so he'd stop because he wouldn't be able to breathe. "Put me down," he told Rasmus, without looking at him. It was calm and authoritative. Not a request.
"Will you start again?" Rasmus said mildly, looking vaguely offended at Kratochvil's laughter. "It is hardly appropriate for men of rank such as yourselves to be fighting in such a way."
Ravindra wasn't looking at him and Anson was just now starting to wind down, looking like he might be sick from laughing so hard, and maybe swallowing a few pints of his own blood, by the look of his face. Rasmus gave a sigh and let the two of them down, letting them find their balance before he let go.
"Honestly," he said disapprovingly, looking behind him. Where had he dropped his sword?
He couldn't find the words, though the laughter was dying off, and just shook his head fiercely. No, they were definitely done fighting for today. Anson just stood with his hands on his knees, head down, gasping for breath. He coughed once before he straightened up, struggling to keep a straight face and entirely unmindful of all the blood that was beginning to stain his clothes. "Thanks, Rasmus."
Oh, fuck, that was enough to get him to start snickering again... "Sorry to-- interrupt your training." Anson ran both his hands through his hair, still chuckling as he shook his head. Wow. It was all kind of surreal-- but he needed to cut it short, clean himself off and hope he didn't look too battered by Lusine's wedding. Someone would throw a fit, he was damn sure of that. Anson turned, moving towards the barracks without another word to either of them.
"No." Ravi had no intention of getting pulled away by Rasmus again, despite how badly he wanted to wipe the smile off of Kratochvil's face.
When he was on solid ground again, he straightened out his uniform, closed his eyes, and breathed, trying to ignore the laughter going on just a few feet away. It had been at least five years since the last time he'd done that. He remembered now why he'd stopped. Not just that it hurt--it was embarrassing to think something so simple had started it, to remember losing control over such a stupid remark.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Rasmus still standing over them and Kratochvil finally having mostly collected himself. Mostly. He also saw the crowd that had gathered, though the majority of them were trying to pretend they hadn't been gathering at all, and that was the worst part. People had seen it. They would remember this.
Fuck. Why couldn't he just keep his anger under control? He'd gotten so much better at it--why did it have to fail here? Now?
Rasmus could've at least let him win first. It was less embarrassing that way.
As Kratochvil turned and walked off, Ravi threw a glance at Rasmus('s washboard abs--they're eye level okay). "Thank you," he said absently, even though he didn't mean it. He wanted to run off and tackle Kratochvil and start the fight over, but he was smart enough to realize Ras had made the right call.
With that, he turned and left, opposite Kratochvil's direction, to go nurse his wounds and fret over making stupid decisions in front of the entire Guard.
And then Ras stood there, looking confused, while both of them walked away, because where on earth had he put his sword? So he stood there, muscular arms folded in front of his glistening chest, the sweat on his olive skin glinting in the sunlight.
"...what are you looking at?" he asked a few of the other guard who were still lingering, and they scattered at the sight of his frown. It left him in peace to continue squinting across the training grounds, trying to remember what he had done with his weapon.