laylah
in
springkink
Final Fantasy XII (Ashe/Basch)
Title: This One Night
Author: Laylah
Rating: R
Warning: End-of-game spoilers.
Word count: ~2500
Summary: He does not speak, though she can see in his eyes that there are a thousand things he might say, promises, pleas, the same things catching in her throat right now.
The sunset is lovely from her balcony, Ashe must admit, the upper city of Archades spread out before her, washed in rose and gold, architecture that aspires to glory. She wonders if Larsa knows that her bedroom at home faces west, if he selected this room to give her some small familiarity along with the stiff and strange elegance of his city. She would not put it past him; he has shown himself to be quite attentive to detail on this, their first real day of negotiations.
She thinks she hears movement from inside, but she does not turn; there is an entire squadron of servants, it seems, assigned to tend to her needs. Likely it is only one or another of them, laying out for her the Dalmascan-style light supper that Larsa promised she would have.
Only then she hears the unmistakable tread of a soldier in plate armor, heavy with steel and purpose. Ashe turns, and sees him in the doorway, between her and her room, sunset lighting the swooping ridges of his plate. The Magisters' armor is such a clear statement of Archadia's ethos, she thinks -- a thin veneer of civility and elegance over a brutal surfeit of power.
She realizes that she is staring when he bows to her stiffly and says, "Your Majesty."
"I wondered if you would come," Ashe says. Her throat feels tight around the words, her heart beating fast as though there is battle to be joined. She knows not what to do with her hands.
"I wondered if I would be welcome," he answers. His voice sounds wrong, echoing inside Gabranth's helm.
Ashe swallows. "I would see your face," she says. "Please."
He reaches up and lifts the ornate helm free, and beneath it he is both like and unlike she remembers -- his eyes clear as they have ever been, the scar still livid across his brow, his fair hair trimmed shorter than she has ever seen it.
"Basch," she says.
He bows his head. "I do not often hear that name of late," he replies.
"I could scarce call you anything else," Ashe says. Her fingers twine in her skirts, wrinkling the fabric, as she wishes for some signal, some clear idea how she ought to proceed. This is not how she would have them meet again, with him prisoned in his brother's armor and her in the purpose of this visit.
"And I will answer to any name you prefer," Basch says. She can see him hesitate over another Your Majesty and is grateful when he does not say it.
"From Penelo's letters," he begins, just as she says, "I had hoped --"
They both stop, and his wry smile makes her heart feel tight. "After you," he says.
"I had hoped," Ashe murmurs, "that it would not be so long before I saw you again. I grew so used to having you at my side, in those months that we fought together, and now we have another space of two years to overcome. I'm half tempted to demand your presence at my court as one of the terms I present to Larsa." She tries to smile, to lighten the words, but it feels inadequate. She has never entirely learned the trick of speaking of important things as though they were trivial.
"I should be honored," Basch says, "to be considered important enough to rate mention in such a treaty." He pauses. "The negotiations go well? I have not seen his Excellency this evening."
Ashe looks away. "Well enough," she says. "We are both predisposed to the alliance, at least, though the details are of course a quagmire, and it -- it is a political match only, not a terribly romantic one. He has agreed to maintaining distinct sovereignty, due in no small part I'm sure to his desire to focus his reforms on his own city rather than be distracted with mine. We are discussing the provisions for inheritance, in order that Dalmasca and Archadia should remain separate nations in our children's time as well." The light is fading, purpling crimson at the horizon now. "I have not yet raised the issue of my claim to Nabradia, through my late husband." She makes herself look back at Basch, tries again to smile. "I'm sure in comparison to that, my request for the return of one of my knights would seem quite reasonable indeed."
Pain shadows his face for a moment, though he tries to hide it. "My first oath was to you," he says, and she finds herself almost surprised that even now, after this time spent apart and his stay in the vipers' den of Archadian politics, she can so clearly hear when there is strain in his voice. "Should you command that I leave my post here --" and he leaves the sentence unfinished, incomplete, an offer he cannot make with a clear conscience.
"I did not mean," Ashe begins. "I would not ask you to break your oath to --" and still she stumbles over Gabranth's name, old rage rising hot in her throat, "to your brother. Whatever I might selfishly want." For Larsa's sake more than Gabranth's, she will leave that oath unchallenged; surely he needs a steadfast protector more than she does, as he works to restore an empire still scarred by Vayne's ambitions.
Basch gives her another formal Archadian bow. "Thank you, Your Majesty."
"No," Ashe says. "Don't." She has crossed the balcony before she's realized she's moving, catching his hand, in the heavy leather of his gauntlet. "Do not retreat from me now."
He does not speak, though she can see in his eyes that there are a thousand things he might say, promises, pleas, the same things catching in her throat right now. She must stretch up to reach him, her fingers finding purchase at the edge of his breastplate, and the steel is cold even through her dress -- but his mouth is warm, and his lips part, and she does not wait to see if he does so in protest but simply deepens the kiss. It takes but a moment for him to respond, his tongue meeting hers, his hands settling at her waist. The short hairs of his beard are rough against her mouth, as she'd always imagined they would be, and she could curse his armor for being in the way, for keeping her from the warmth of his body.
She reaches for one of the buckles along his side, and tugs at it roughly.
"Your majesty," Basch protests, catching her hand.
"Don't," Ashe tells him again. Her throat feels tight, as if to stop the words, but she has had enough of chances missed and noble sacrifices made. "Give me this one night to be no queen, no emissary. I will take it up again in the morning, but let me shed that for tonight." She pulls at his breastplate. "As you shed this."
"I cannot," he says hoarsely. "I -- I cannot deny you."
"Do not say it as though you are conquered," Ashe pleads.
Basch smiles, and somehow makes that also an act of surrender. "How could I be anything else? I yield," he says, and contradicts himself at once by kissing her, deep and hard, erasing her hesitations and her fears. This time when she reaches for his buckles he does not stop her, merely takes a step back, leading her inside.
Someone has lit a fire in the fireplace, soft warm light that lets her see the look on his face, half-starved for kindness, as needy and desperate as she feels herself. "Here," he says, "like this," and shows her how to undo the straps and buckles that hold his armor in place. She wrenches the pieces free, casting them aside without a care for where they land -- there is too much, has always been too much, between them, and her patience for it has run out all at once. The clatter of steel against the floor makes him flinch, and he begins, "If his Excellency --"
Ashe kisses him again before he can finish the warning, stealing the words from his lips. She knows that this is ill-considered, knows she ought not risk so much for something so frivolous, but these past five years of caution and consideration have seemed a lifetime, bearing her down under their weight. She would not have Larsa know of this, true, but neither would she forego it for his sake.
The second of Basch's pauldrons comes free in her hands, and Ashe steps back, letting it still dangle from her fingers. "The rest," she demands.
"You would have me," Basch begins, as though it is a question, and pulls the first of his gauntlets free.
"Stripped of your Archadian trappings," she answers. She sets aside his pauldron, and reaches for the ribbons that hold fast her dress. "With nothing between your skin and mine."
"I fear you will not find me fair," he says, but he obeys, setting down his gauntlets, unbuckling his poleyns. "The years and battles have been less than kind."
Ashe shakes her head. "Do you think me so shallow?" Unlaced, her dress hangs loose about her, slipping from her shoulders. "I do not seek an untried boy, Basch. I know what -- at least some fraction of what you have borne."
"Forgive my hesitation," Basch says. I would --" and then she lets her dress slide free, baring herself before him, and he falters, the words lost. "Ashe."
"Don't stop," she says. His hands are bare. She can't think how many years it's been since the last time she saw his hands entirely unprotected. They tremble as he unlaces his shirt, and it is that perhaps more than anything else that breaks her heart.
She has seen many of his scars, and guessed at others, but it is still no easy thing to watch him lay them bare -- not only the thin, white marks of wounds taken and quickly healed in battle, but the angry red of wounds sustained in Nalbina, with no potion or magick for solace. To think on them too long makes her shake with anger, first that he could suffer so, and second that he could forgive his treacherous brother's role in his pain.
But she cannot allow herself to dwell on that now. There will be time, and more than time, for anger and regret -- now Basch is setting aside his clothes, setting aside his other vows, to be only hers tonight. Ashe will not mar this chance with recriminations any more than she would with demands for promises they could neither of them keep. She takes a step toward him, another, and then she is in his arms and finds she's shaking -- finds she's clinging to him, desperate for warmth and touch. He claims her mouth -- surrenders his own -- perhaps both; perhaps there is no difference -- and this time, with naught between them, she can feel him stir against her belly when she nips at his tongue, when she leans up into his warmth.
"Come to bed with me," Ashe says, and it should have been some other way -- it should have been her own bed, and he should have been her own protector, at her side instead of here, in a country that neither of them loves, in secret -- it should have been so many other things, but those chances have passed, and now it is this that remains to them: Basch follows her into the too-soft Archadian bed, and Ashe resolves to make it enough.
His hand settles at the curve of her waist, and he stretches out beside her, pressing his lips to her throat, her collarbone, her shoulder. "Ashe," he whispers, reverent, shaky. "Ashe."
She rolls onto her back, her knees parting, and reaches for him. "Come here," she says.
Basch rises up on his knees above her, but does not take the invitation she's offered, not at once. Instead he cups her breasts in his hands, his calluses rough against soft skin, and brushes his thumbs across her nipples. When the touch makes her arch her back, makes her breath catch in her throat, he shifts his weight so that he lies half across her body, braced on one elbow, and lowers his head to take one of her nipples in his mouth. The prickle of his beard against her skin, the wet heat of his tongue, the careful scrape of his teeth -- Ashe shudders, clenches her fingers in the sheets, tries to stifle the thin sound that rises in her throat. Her hips rock up toward him and she aches, hot and swollen, between her thighs.
"Basch," she breathes. "Please."
He releases her breast and slides downward, his lips brushing the hollow below her ribcage, the flat of her stomach, the arch of her pubic bone. He pauses there and looks up, his eyes needy, his scar flushed.
"Please," Ashe whispers once more.
Basch's eyes flutter closed and he bends to taste her, tongue lapping slowly as he traces his way between her folds. She whimpers, spreading her thighs further, trying to keep watching him -- and he reaches for her hand, moves it to the back of his neck, coaxes her to curl her fingers tight in his hair. It's barely long enough for her to grip, and she misses the length it used to have.
"Gods," she breathes, "gods, Basch -- yes --" and he answers her with a low moan that she can feel against her flesh. Her hand flexes and relaxes in his hair, pulling, pleading, and when he closes his mouth around her most sensitive flesh and sucks, hard, she keens with the pleasure. "Please," she says, rocking her hips, pushing toward him. "Inside me."
He moans again, and she loosens her grip in his hair -- and his fingers press inside her, rough against tender flesh, and she would stop him, demand more, make him give her what she meant, save that he proves himself so skilled like this. His fingers stroke inside her, and his tongue laps steadily, and she gasps, moans, feels her body drawing tight toward him, around him -- feels the heat gathering, the light building behind her eyes -- and when climax overtakes her she turns her head, bites the flesh of her own arm to stifle the noise, and still fears it is not enough. He undoes her, wrings her out, leaves her weak and trembling with release. Her throat feels tight, and though she squeezes her eyes shut against them, still she feels tears spill over her cheeks.
"Majesty," Basch says in alarm, and corrects himself -- "Ashe -- I'm sorry. Please --"
Ashe makes herself sit up, reaches for him, pulls him into her arms. "Don't," she says, burying her face in the hollow of his shoulder, taking comfort in the scent of his skin. "Don't apologize. I want this. Want you."
He pulls back to meet her eyes, and she wants to believe that the look on his face is more hope than nervousness. "You want...?"
"Come here," she says, and draws Basch down on top of her, lifting her knees. When he looks likely to protest, she kisses him, and he makes a sound like a sob into her mouth as she wraps her legs around his waist and pulls him in. He wraps his arms around her, and she rocks up to meet him: and she will hold fast to this moment, as long as she can.
Author: Laylah
Rating: R
Warning: End-of-game spoilers.
Word count: ~2500
Summary: He does not speak, though she can see in his eyes that there are a thousand things he might say, promises, pleas, the same things catching in her throat right now.
The sunset is lovely from her balcony, Ashe must admit, the upper city of Archades spread out before her, washed in rose and gold, architecture that aspires to glory. She wonders if Larsa knows that her bedroom at home faces west, if he selected this room to give her some small familiarity along with the stiff and strange elegance of his city. She would not put it past him; he has shown himself to be quite attentive to detail on this, their first real day of negotiations.
She thinks she hears movement from inside, but she does not turn; there is an entire squadron of servants, it seems, assigned to tend to her needs. Likely it is only one or another of them, laying out for her the Dalmascan-style light supper that Larsa promised she would have.
Only then she hears the unmistakable tread of a soldier in plate armor, heavy with steel and purpose. Ashe turns, and sees him in the doorway, between her and her room, sunset lighting the swooping ridges of his plate. The Magisters' armor is such a clear statement of Archadia's ethos, she thinks -- a thin veneer of civility and elegance over a brutal surfeit of power.
She realizes that she is staring when he bows to her stiffly and says, "Your Majesty."
"I wondered if you would come," Ashe says. Her throat feels tight around the words, her heart beating fast as though there is battle to be joined. She knows not what to do with her hands.
"I wondered if I would be welcome," he answers. His voice sounds wrong, echoing inside Gabranth's helm.
Ashe swallows. "I would see your face," she says. "Please."
He reaches up and lifts the ornate helm free, and beneath it he is both like and unlike she remembers -- his eyes clear as they have ever been, the scar still livid across his brow, his fair hair trimmed shorter than she has ever seen it.
"Basch," she says.
He bows his head. "I do not often hear that name of late," he replies.
"I could scarce call you anything else," Ashe says. Her fingers twine in her skirts, wrinkling the fabric, as she wishes for some signal, some clear idea how she ought to proceed. This is not how she would have them meet again, with him prisoned in his brother's armor and her in the purpose of this visit.
"And I will answer to any name you prefer," Basch says. She can see him hesitate over another Your Majesty and is grateful when he does not say it.
"From Penelo's letters," he begins, just as she says, "I had hoped --"
They both stop, and his wry smile makes her heart feel tight. "After you," he says.
"I had hoped," Ashe murmurs, "that it would not be so long before I saw you again. I grew so used to having you at my side, in those months that we fought together, and now we have another space of two years to overcome. I'm half tempted to demand your presence at my court as one of the terms I present to Larsa." She tries to smile, to lighten the words, but it feels inadequate. She has never entirely learned the trick of speaking of important things as though they were trivial.
"I should be honored," Basch says, "to be considered important enough to rate mention in such a treaty." He pauses. "The negotiations go well? I have not seen his Excellency this evening."
Ashe looks away. "Well enough," she says. "We are both predisposed to the alliance, at least, though the details are of course a quagmire, and it -- it is a political match only, not a terribly romantic one. He has agreed to maintaining distinct sovereignty, due in no small part I'm sure to his desire to focus his reforms on his own city rather than be distracted with mine. We are discussing the provisions for inheritance, in order that Dalmasca and Archadia should remain separate nations in our children's time as well." The light is fading, purpling crimson at the horizon now. "I have not yet raised the issue of my claim to Nabradia, through my late husband." She makes herself look back at Basch, tries again to smile. "I'm sure in comparison to that, my request for the return of one of my knights would seem quite reasonable indeed."
Pain shadows his face for a moment, though he tries to hide it. "My first oath was to you," he says, and she finds herself almost surprised that even now, after this time spent apart and his stay in the vipers' den of Archadian politics, she can so clearly hear when there is strain in his voice. "Should you command that I leave my post here --" and he leaves the sentence unfinished, incomplete, an offer he cannot make with a clear conscience.
"I did not mean," Ashe begins. "I would not ask you to break your oath to --" and still she stumbles over Gabranth's name, old rage rising hot in her throat, "to your brother. Whatever I might selfishly want." For Larsa's sake more than Gabranth's, she will leave that oath unchallenged; surely he needs a steadfast protector more than she does, as he works to restore an empire still scarred by Vayne's ambitions.
Basch gives her another formal Archadian bow. "Thank you, Your Majesty."
"No," Ashe says. "Don't." She has crossed the balcony before she's realized she's moving, catching his hand, in the heavy leather of his gauntlet. "Do not retreat from me now."
He does not speak, though she can see in his eyes that there are a thousand things he might say, promises, pleas, the same things catching in her throat right now. She must stretch up to reach him, her fingers finding purchase at the edge of his breastplate, and the steel is cold even through her dress -- but his mouth is warm, and his lips part, and she does not wait to see if he does so in protest but simply deepens the kiss. It takes but a moment for him to respond, his tongue meeting hers, his hands settling at her waist. The short hairs of his beard are rough against her mouth, as she'd always imagined they would be, and she could curse his armor for being in the way, for keeping her from the warmth of his body.
She reaches for one of the buckles along his side, and tugs at it roughly.
"Your majesty," Basch protests, catching her hand.
"Don't," Ashe tells him again. Her throat feels tight, as if to stop the words, but she has had enough of chances missed and noble sacrifices made. "Give me this one night to be no queen, no emissary. I will take it up again in the morning, but let me shed that for tonight." She pulls at his breastplate. "As you shed this."
"I cannot," he says hoarsely. "I -- I cannot deny you."
"Do not say it as though you are conquered," Ashe pleads.
Basch smiles, and somehow makes that also an act of surrender. "How could I be anything else? I yield," he says, and contradicts himself at once by kissing her, deep and hard, erasing her hesitations and her fears. This time when she reaches for his buckles he does not stop her, merely takes a step back, leading her inside.
Someone has lit a fire in the fireplace, soft warm light that lets her see the look on his face, half-starved for kindness, as needy and desperate as she feels herself. "Here," he says, "like this," and shows her how to undo the straps and buckles that hold his armor in place. She wrenches the pieces free, casting them aside without a care for where they land -- there is too much, has always been too much, between them, and her patience for it has run out all at once. The clatter of steel against the floor makes him flinch, and he begins, "If his Excellency --"
Ashe kisses him again before he can finish the warning, stealing the words from his lips. She knows that this is ill-considered, knows she ought not risk so much for something so frivolous, but these past five years of caution and consideration have seemed a lifetime, bearing her down under their weight. She would not have Larsa know of this, true, but neither would she forego it for his sake.
The second of Basch's pauldrons comes free in her hands, and Ashe steps back, letting it still dangle from her fingers. "The rest," she demands.
"You would have me," Basch begins, as though it is a question, and pulls the first of his gauntlets free.
"Stripped of your Archadian trappings," she answers. She sets aside his pauldron, and reaches for the ribbons that hold fast her dress. "With nothing between your skin and mine."
"I fear you will not find me fair," he says, but he obeys, setting down his gauntlets, unbuckling his poleyns. "The years and battles have been less than kind."
Ashe shakes her head. "Do you think me so shallow?" Unlaced, her dress hangs loose about her, slipping from her shoulders. "I do not seek an untried boy, Basch. I know what -- at least some fraction of what you have borne."
"Forgive my hesitation," Basch says. I would --" and then she lets her dress slide free, baring herself before him, and he falters, the words lost. "Ashe."
"Don't stop," she says. His hands are bare. She can't think how many years it's been since the last time she saw his hands entirely unprotected. They tremble as he unlaces his shirt, and it is that perhaps more than anything else that breaks her heart.
She has seen many of his scars, and guessed at others, but it is still no easy thing to watch him lay them bare -- not only the thin, white marks of wounds taken and quickly healed in battle, but the angry red of wounds sustained in Nalbina, with no potion or magick for solace. To think on them too long makes her shake with anger, first that he could suffer so, and second that he could forgive his treacherous brother's role in his pain.
But she cannot allow herself to dwell on that now. There will be time, and more than time, for anger and regret -- now Basch is setting aside his clothes, setting aside his other vows, to be only hers tonight. Ashe will not mar this chance with recriminations any more than she would with demands for promises they could neither of them keep. She takes a step toward him, another, and then she is in his arms and finds she's shaking -- finds she's clinging to him, desperate for warmth and touch. He claims her mouth -- surrenders his own -- perhaps both; perhaps there is no difference -- and this time, with naught between them, she can feel him stir against her belly when she nips at his tongue, when she leans up into his warmth.
"Come to bed with me," Ashe says, and it should have been some other way -- it should have been her own bed, and he should have been her own protector, at her side instead of here, in a country that neither of them loves, in secret -- it should have been so many other things, but those chances have passed, and now it is this that remains to them: Basch follows her into the too-soft Archadian bed, and Ashe resolves to make it enough.
His hand settles at the curve of her waist, and he stretches out beside her, pressing his lips to her throat, her collarbone, her shoulder. "Ashe," he whispers, reverent, shaky. "Ashe."
She rolls onto her back, her knees parting, and reaches for him. "Come here," she says.
Basch rises up on his knees above her, but does not take the invitation she's offered, not at once. Instead he cups her breasts in his hands, his calluses rough against soft skin, and brushes his thumbs across her nipples. When the touch makes her arch her back, makes her breath catch in her throat, he shifts his weight so that he lies half across her body, braced on one elbow, and lowers his head to take one of her nipples in his mouth. The prickle of his beard against her skin, the wet heat of his tongue, the careful scrape of his teeth -- Ashe shudders, clenches her fingers in the sheets, tries to stifle the thin sound that rises in her throat. Her hips rock up toward him and she aches, hot and swollen, between her thighs.
"Basch," she breathes. "Please."
He releases her breast and slides downward, his lips brushing the hollow below her ribcage, the flat of her stomach, the arch of her pubic bone. He pauses there and looks up, his eyes needy, his scar flushed.
"Please," Ashe whispers once more.
Basch's eyes flutter closed and he bends to taste her, tongue lapping slowly as he traces his way between her folds. She whimpers, spreading her thighs further, trying to keep watching him -- and he reaches for her hand, moves it to the back of his neck, coaxes her to curl her fingers tight in his hair. It's barely long enough for her to grip, and she misses the length it used to have.
"Gods," she breathes, "gods, Basch -- yes --" and he answers her with a low moan that she can feel against her flesh. Her hand flexes and relaxes in his hair, pulling, pleading, and when he closes his mouth around her most sensitive flesh and sucks, hard, she keens with the pleasure. "Please," she says, rocking her hips, pushing toward him. "Inside me."
He moans again, and she loosens her grip in his hair -- and his fingers press inside her, rough against tender flesh, and she would stop him, demand more, make him give her what she meant, save that he proves himself so skilled like this. His fingers stroke inside her, and his tongue laps steadily, and she gasps, moans, feels her body drawing tight toward him, around him -- feels the heat gathering, the light building behind her eyes -- and when climax overtakes her she turns her head, bites the flesh of her own arm to stifle the noise, and still fears it is not enough. He undoes her, wrings her out, leaves her weak and trembling with release. Her throat feels tight, and though she squeezes her eyes shut against them, still she feels tears spill over her cheeks.
"Majesty," Basch says in alarm, and corrects himself -- "Ashe -- I'm sorry. Please --"
Ashe makes herself sit up, reaches for him, pulls him into her arms. "Don't," she says, burying her face in the hollow of his shoulder, taking comfort in the scent of his skin. "Don't apologize. I want this. Want you."
He pulls back to meet her eyes, and she wants to believe that the look on his face is more hope than nervousness. "You want...?"
"Come here," she says, and draws Basch down on top of her, lifting her knees. When he looks likely to protest, she kisses him, and he makes a sound like a sob into her mouth as she wraps her legs around his waist and pulls him in. He wraps his arms around her, and she rocks up to meet him: and she will hold fast to this moment, as long as she can.