A circle for pain [Final Fantasy XII:OGC, Vayne x Gabranth, R]
Final Fantasy XII: sex on a grave (one or both of them considered dead and officially buried) - the rumors about my death are highly exaggerated (i would prefer Vayne/Gabranth, but anyone not 'officially alive' at the end of the game is all right too)
[A/N: Uhh… ‘on’ was going to be a little hard in this case. Hope you are happy with ‘near’. : ) Also, it seems that I took two prompts for this day -.-;; I’ll try to make the other one by late today… if not, later this week. Sorry.]
A circle for pain
I
From the influx of curious tourists, government officials and family members of the deceased, a small impromptu town, yet unnamed, had sprung up around the dead hulk of the Bahamut, built first by the enterprising and then fortified and rearranged by the Dalmascan Queen with basic infrastructure, town planning, and even rudimentary police.
Still, the original sprawl, the shelter from the desert, and its placement so close to Dalmasca’s capital made it a lightning rod for pirates and mercenaries wary of Rabanastre’s reorganized Knight Order, another Balfonheim, within the desert and surrounding a mass grave. Only half of Bahamut’s hundreds-strong crew had managed to evacuate before the crash, and in an uneven boundary around the massive airship were strings of white stone markers, set in equal respect for the dead, both to the Archadian forces and to the members of the Resistance that had fallen in battle.
Not all of them had names, he noted, pulling his hood down over dyed, cropped hair as he sensed the approach of others. It had taken a day or two of circling to find his marker, his old name, written in his brother’s uneven hand. His first name, and not the one his twin had assumed.
Some distance away, there was another stone, this one written in precise, narrow letters: Carudas. The desert lily he twisted in his gloved fingers, absently, the ache from a year’s old wound a dull claw against his spine as he limped towards the marker, his walking stick pressing furrows into the sand.
As he bent, painfully, to place the flower, his joints all a-protest, his spine flaring with fresh agony, another’s shadow cropped into his field of vision, behind him. He ignored it, offering a silent prayer instead, short and unfocused, before attempting to get slowly to his feet.
He flinched when another’s gloved hand swept to his arm in easy support, lifting him, and as he turned to offer gruff thanks, the words shriveled in his throat.
The intruder too, stood hooded, what few strands of fine, shoulder-length hair unraveled beneath white cloth also painted, tawny russet, eyes hidden, but under the familiar aquiline nose the smirk is easy and cruel.
“I see that luck was quick to smile on us both, Noah.” Under the glove, the hand is unnaturally unyielding. It curled, tight enough to hurt, then drew away. Vayne was unarmed, with a simple, hooded robe over a set of chainmail, breeches, boots, but then, if Noah recalled, if warily, Vayne was almost always unarmed, save where ceremony dictated. He did not need it.
“I could have you killed, here, now,” Noah said, the first words from his mind flat and as insolent as he could manage, a final, derisive, “Ser.”
“True, you could call the guards, denounce me and reveal my name,” Vayne’s smirk stayed sharp and curved, perfect with his deceptively sensuous mouth. “But have you aught else to go?”
Those words, the same words, spoken with the same, imperious arrogance in Landis’ snow as on Dalmasca’s desert, and the knight within him begs to obey. This time, however, Noah forced his lip to curl. “I have naught else to go, ser, but then, now, neither do you.”
“I always have found my way,” Vayne disagreed, careless as a cat and just as smug. “Know you that your brother lives with your name?”
“He lives with one,” Noah emphasized, harshly, “Who else would have braved his way through the wreckage, found me, pulled me out and back?” And nursed him through the fever, the delirium, and later, the broken shock of never being able to stand straight or wield a blade again, all unjudging. And here, Vayne, the beginning, stood hale and hearty and whole. “I gave it to him with my blessing.”
“I suppose that logical.” Vayne flicked his eyes with a final, unreadable glance up at the bulk of the airship, and Noah noted with a start that the orbs were golden. “I have rooms at the Lacona.”
Noah sucked in a breath, angry and stuttered. “What makes you presume-”
“I do not need you,” the serpent curled words in a spiral of the fall of another world, Noah’s first, in the shadow of the second, “But you appear to need me.”
Noah was still struggling for an appropriately scathing reply, even when Vayne made his elegant exit, pain twisted tight in his chest, his breathing shallow.
Once he had agreed, hesitantly at first, then wholeheartedly and with all his soul in the years that came, and it had broken him.
II
Noah was proud enough not to beg, but not proud enough to refuse his brother’s gil. Technically, he reasoned, as he sat on the rented bed of the room in the tiny inn, counting out his coin, it was, in fact, his coin. He’d had no reason or chance to spend much of his generous pay, and if he last recalled, the interest had been fairly comfortable. In a sweep of perfect irony, his brother was now the Magister and the Magister was the penniless knight, adrift with no cause and alongside a deposed sovereign.
He’ll wait two more nights and his brother’s next letter, and then, mayhap, board a ship to Balfonheim. Basch had not found Balthier’s corpse, but the Strahl sat yet in port in Dalmasca, her master gone; Balfonheim without Balthier would likely be tolerable. Noah had never had any problems with Zecht, and as such, few with Rikken.
And after that… Noah supposed he could enjoy the sun and beach and the sea, and wait for death, too proud again to return to Archades and to the mercies of a brother he had betrayed and friends he had turned his back upon. He slept uneasy, fitful and tormented, woke to red-rimmed eyes and a festering agony in his spine; shaky hands measured m’atha pills, swallowed with stale water.
Noah was unsurprised to find Vayne seated primly at a table, down the stair at the inn, but he was surprised to find himself tired, tired rather than furious, even under the drug. He considered taking another table, or better, ignoring the man and walking out, but Vayne leaned back, crooking a finger very slightly against the grainy wood, the pull of command as easy as breathing, and Noah grit his teeth as he limped over to take a seat, mustering as much ill grace as he could.
“Good morning,” Vayne said, urbane and pleasant, the hood pushed back on his shoulders.
Aside from his hair, cut short to spikes over his shoulders, there was something subtly different about his cheeks and the slant of his eyes, though not sufficient, at least in Noah’s opinion, to mark Vayne out as another. Still, none of the other patrons so much as gave him a second glance, save for a few sidelong ones of admiration from women. Magic, mayhap. Noah was ever insensitive to the same.
“Breakfast?” the last Emperor of all Archadia added, when Noah did not respond, and then, absently, “You are taking m’atha?”
“Aye,” Noah allowed, if stiffly. He had no appetite after the pills, though they were balm for the pain, and the warm buzz lasted through to the afternoon. Vayne sighed, as though at the willfulness of a stubborn child, but m’atha in its first hour dulled even emotion.
“How long?”
“A while,” Noah said, as insolently vague as he could. Since his brother had to return to Archades.
“An addict,” Vayne observed, inclining his head as a serving girl arrived, blushing as he smiled warmly at her. “Breakfast and coffee for two, my dear.”
“Sir, which? We have a selection-”
“Whichever you choose, my lady.” Her flush deepened to cherry red, and she all but skipped away, Noah noted, sourly. Vayne’s charm, at least, had survived death and usurpation intact.
“I have no appetite,” Noah reminded Vayne irritably, hands curled on his lap. “You need not trouble yourself at your expense.”
“I often do,” Vayne said, with his lazy, handsome smile, and two years ago, Noah’s heart would have stopped within him; like as not, under his helm, he would have blushed as deep as the serving girl. Pain crippled his answering thin-lipped smile into a sneer. “Your fingers, Noah.”
“Aye, what of them.”
“Put them here.” Vayne tapped the table with one gloved hand, and when Noah made no move, drawled, “Please.”
Put that way, refusing would cost him dignity and afford Vayne only amusement. With a show of reluctance, Noah placed one hand, palm down, on the table, and flinched when Vayne caught his wrist and dragged it closer, turning it palm up with uncommon strength.
A gloved finger traced a slow, intimate circle over his palm, and as Noah half-stood, in indignant outrage, about to jerk back his hand, he froze instead; the pain was gone, his mind starkly clear, and blessedly, he now remembered what it was like to be hungry.
He ate in a daze, trying his best not to look up at Vayne’s undoubtedly smug smirk, in silence, eggs and lathe leaves and fresh sausages, trying to pace himself without choking. Over coffee, bluntly, Noah asked, “How long?”
“How long?” Vayne repeated, his cruel smile indicating that the question had been understood.
“Before whatever you did to me wears off.” He knew Vayne too well.
Vayne inclined his head, amused. “Two hours, mayhap. Three.” In his golden eyes was unhurried malice enough to indicate that this was whim rather than ability.
“From whatever you took into yourself on the ship?”
“Venat, aye. Merging the remnants of her soul into mine has been quite beneficial.”
“You have become one of them?”
“In a sense. I left a simulacrum to battle my brother and the Lady’s party on the Bahamut, while I departed to study the lifestream. It is,” Vayne added, distantly, “Very beautiful. I can see why the others concerned themselves so very much with it. ‘Tis a pity that they see only the lifestream, however, and not the sum total of what it forms.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Of that I am aware.” Vayne said dryly, and took a sip of his coffee.
“And if you think that because you can take away my pain I will follow you-”
“Rather,” Vayne interrupted, so very benign, “You should ask yourself why I should ask you to follow me.”
For that, even after half a night’s restless thought, Noah still had no answer.
III
Stubbornness fueled Noah’s determination to go back to his ways, and two nights passed in an aching crawl, the effort taken to ignore Vayne’s peripheral presence growing ever more difficult. On the third day, frustrated that the mail was late, glaring at Vayne lounging across the street with his long legs primly crossed on a street stall’s bench, Noah grabbed the elbow of a passing guardsman.
“That man over there,” Noah gestured, pointing, “Is Vayne Solidor in disguise.”
The guardsman glanced up, frowning, then around, then back at Noah, disbelief and irritation turning to pity. “You’ve had too much sun, good sir.”
“No, if you’ll only look, past the hair-”
“Sir,” The guardsman added, as politely as he was able, “Please unhand me.”
“I must apologize,” Vayne said pleasantly, behind his shoulder, “This man is a friend of mine, and pranks are one of the few pleasures left to him. The war, you see. Could you find it within you to forgive him?”
“Oh, of course,” the guardsman said, taken aback. “No offense was taken. Good day, sirs.”
Noah watched as the guardsman walked away in a welling sense of futility, then he flinched as Vayne idly drew a circle against the small of his back. Temporarily freed of pain, Noah straightened as much as he could, twisted around, and threw a punch, but Vayne had dodged, neatly and economically, gloved hands clasped behind him.
“Five hours,” Vayne observed, and sauntered back to the stall even as Noah shuddered. He spent the time curled defiantly in bed instead of walking about town, half-awake, vaguely wondering if his brother had finally gotten along with his charger.
His brother’s letter, arrived on the morrow, answered a wry no to that, as well as another extensive and slightly obsessive list of what Basch had done to date in an attempt to win Hunter over. Noah had to smile, even with the gil wrapped in the letter and the ever cautious, awkward invitation at the very bottom that asked him back to Archades.
On his first reply, Noah began a line with Vayne is here, grimaced, crushed the letter, and started again; this time, going to Balfonheim, hesitated, crushed the second, and sighed. A mouthful of water and m’atha pills, and he took sleep in lieu of any active inspiration.
He woke to Vayne in his room, leaning against the plain table, going through his letters, looking so very natural that for a long, stunned moment, Noah could only blink. Then he lunged, hands clawed, snarling, only for Vayne to twist aside, drag his hands behind his back, and force him back on the bed, sitting primly on his back and his spine and flanks flared in fresh agony.
He’d taught Vayne that, Noah remembered, through the haze of pain. Evidently, the man still loved his irony.
“Not Balfonheim?” Vayne’s deceptively playful lilt only made Noah sneer against the cotton sheets, breathless and past fury and bitterness into utter weariness.
“You know I will follow you. Even if you could not help me. Even if you did not ask.”
“At the very least,” Vayne’s pity in itself was bladed, bled, as he took the balled papers in a hand, incinerating them with a glance, “You had thought not to. Have you an answer?”
“To why you would ask me to follow you?” Noah allowed himself a bark of harsh laughter. “As before, the beginning. You find me amusing.”
“As before, mayhap so.” Vayne traced a circle between his shoulderblades, then a long, blessedly cool line, down his spine, to his wrists, then he curled lightly to his feet. “Disrobe yourself.”
“Bastard,” Noah said, wearily, though he complied.
“Sit up.” Vayne made no move to help him, inspecting instead the ugly knots of poorly healed flesh, the jut of a twisted spine, scars and burns writ long before Basch had found him in the wreckage.
“Can you fix it?” Noah asked, hesitant, as the silence stretched, felt Vayne smirk behind him.
“I have no need to.” Fingers pressed down against his back, over the twist of bone, and traced a downward triangle against the arch of his rump.
When Vayne entered him, slow and deep and sure, after, Noah bit down as hard as he could on his lower lip, the cry on his tongue jarred shut against his teeth.
IV
Balfonheim, Noah wrote, is pleasantly cool.
He balanced the paper on a book in his lap, shoulder against the wall, Vayne curled and oddly enough, asleep around him, the press of naked flesh oft ceding to an alien texture akin to warmed metal. Seagulls called from perches atop posts along the marketway outside, the scent of spice leaking through even the barred windows. Slicked, sated flesh pressed against his hip.
As to Hunter, I have often found success in positive reinforcement. The pen paused, as Noah’s lip curled, faintly, Eventually, even the most recalcitrant animal will learn to accept its master.
A curve of flesh against his thigh; Noah looked down, but Vayne still seemed asleep. Shakily, he crumpled the letter, tossed it for the bin, and took up another from the stack beside Vayne’s wealth of now pale-blonde hair, felt his master stir.
“To your brother?” Vayne asked, if husky from sleep. Occuria, even half Occuria, Noah was sure, likely did not require such mortal cycles, but Vayne seemed intent on clinging, as he said once and so very dryly, to his primitive impulses.
“Aye. Ser.”
“Hnn.” The lithe, too-perfect body yawned. Vayne had not yet decided what next to do, despite his cavalier surety, though he had ‘plans’, and as before, as always, with that Noah was instinctively content. A shift, another stretch, and Vayne was still again, his breathing evening.
Balfonheim, Noah wrote, grimly, is pleasantly cool.
-fin-
.
[A/N: Uhh… ‘on’ was going to be a little hard in this case. Hope you are happy with ‘near’. : ) Also, it seems that I took two prompts for this day -.-;; I’ll try to make the other one by late today… if not, later this week. Sorry.]
A circle for pain
I
From the influx of curious tourists, government officials and family members of the deceased, a small impromptu town, yet unnamed, had sprung up around the dead hulk of the Bahamut, built first by the enterprising and then fortified and rearranged by the Dalmascan Queen with basic infrastructure, town planning, and even rudimentary police.
Still, the original sprawl, the shelter from the desert, and its placement so close to Dalmasca’s capital made it a lightning rod for pirates and mercenaries wary of Rabanastre’s reorganized Knight Order, another Balfonheim, within the desert and surrounding a mass grave. Only half of Bahamut’s hundreds-strong crew had managed to evacuate before the crash, and in an uneven boundary around the massive airship were strings of white stone markers, set in equal respect for the dead, both to the Archadian forces and to the members of the Resistance that had fallen in battle.
Not all of them had names, he noted, pulling his hood down over dyed, cropped hair as he sensed the approach of others. It had taken a day or two of circling to find his marker, his old name, written in his brother’s uneven hand. His first name, and not the one his twin had assumed.
Some distance away, there was another stone, this one written in precise, narrow letters: Carudas. The desert lily he twisted in his gloved fingers, absently, the ache from a year’s old wound a dull claw against his spine as he limped towards the marker, his walking stick pressing furrows into the sand.
As he bent, painfully, to place the flower, his joints all a-protest, his spine flaring with fresh agony, another’s shadow cropped into his field of vision, behind him. He ignored it, offering a silent prayer instead, short and unfocused, before attempting to get slowly to his feet.
He flinched when another’s gloved hand swept to his arm in easy support, lifting him, and as he turned to offer gruff thanks, the words shriveled in his throat.
The intruder too, stood hooded, what few strands of fine, shoulder-length hair unraveled beneath white cloth also painted, tawny russet, eyes hidden, but under the familiar aquiline nose the smirk is easy and cruel.
“I see that luck was quick to smile on us both, Noah.” Under the glove, the hand is unnaturally unyielding. It curled, tight enough to hurt, then drew away. Vayne was unarmed, with a simple, hooded robe over a set of chainmail, breeches, boots, but then, if Noah recalled, if warily, Vayne was almost always unarmed, save where ceremony dictated. He did not need it.
“I could have you killed, here, now,” Noah said, the first words from his mind flat and as insolent as he could manage, a final, derisive, “Ser.”
“True, you could call the guards, denounce me and reveal my name,” Vayne’s smirk stayed sharp and curved, perfect with his deceptively sensuous mouth. “But have you aught else to go?”
Those words, the same words, spoken with the same, imperious arrogance in Landis’ snow as on Dalmasca’s desert, and the knight within him begs to obey. This time, however, Noah forced his lip to curl. “I have naught else to go, ser, but then, now, neither do you.”
“I always have found my way,” Vayne disagreed, careless as a cat and just as smug. “Know you that your brother lives with your name?”
“He lives with one,” Noah emphasized, harshly, “Who else would have braved his way through the wreckage, found me, pulled me out and back?” And nursed him through the fever, the delirium, and later, the broken shock of never being able to stand straight or wield a blade again, all unjudging. And here, Vayne, the beginning, stood hale and hearty and whole. “I gave it to him with my blessing.”
“I suppose that logical.” Vayne flicked his eyes with a final, unreadable glance up at the bulk of the airship, and Noah noted with a start that the orbs were golden. “I have rooms at the Lacona.”
Noah sucked in a breath, angry and stuttered. “What makes you presume-”
“I do not need you,” the serpent curled words in a spiral of the fall of another world, Noah’s first, in the shadow of the second, “But you appear to need me.”
Noah was still struggling for an appropriately scathing reply, even when Vayne made his elegant exit, pain twisted tight in his chest, his breathing shallow.
Once he had agreed, hesitantly at first, then wholeheartedly and with all his soul in the years that came, and it had broken him.
II
Noah was proud enough not to beg, but not proud enough to refuse his brother’s gil. Technically, he reasoned, as he sat on the rented bed of the room in the tiny inn, counting out his coin, it was, in fact, his coin. He’d had no reason or chance to spend much of his generous pay, and if he last recalled, the interest had been fairly comfortable. In a sweep of perfect irony, his brother was now the Magister and the Magister was the penniless knight, adrift with no cause and alongside a deposed sovereign.
He’ll wait two more nights and his brother’s next letter, and then, mayhap, board a ship to Balfonheim. Basch had not found Balthier’s corpse, but the Strahl sat yet in port in Dalmasca, her master gone; Balfonheim without Balthier would likely be tolerable. Noah had never had any problems with Zecht, and as such, few with Rikken.
And after that… Noah supposed he could enjoy the sun and beach and the sea, and wait for death, too proud again to return to Archades and to the mercies of a brother he had betrayed and friends he had turned his back upon. He slept uneasy, fitful and tormented, woke to red-rimmed eyes and a festering agony in his spine; shaky hands measured m’atha pills, swallowed with stale water.
Noah was unsurprised to find Vayne seated primly at a table, down the stair at the inn, but he was surprised to find himself tired, tired rather than furious, even under the drug. He considered taking another table, or better, ignoring the man and walking out, but Vayne leaned back, crooking a finger very slightly against the grainy wood, the pull of command as easy as breathing, and Noah grit his teeth as he limped over to take a seat, mustering as much ill grace as he could.
“Good morning,” Vayne said, urbane and pleasant, the hood pushed back on his shoulders.
Aside from his hair, cut short to spikes over his shoulders, there was something subtly different about his cheeks and the slant of his eyes, though not sufficient, at least in Noah’s opinion, to mark Vayne out as another. Still, none of the other patrons so much as gave him a second glance, save for a few sidelong ones of admiration from women. Magic, mayhap. Noah was ever insensitive to the same.
“Breakfast?” the last Emperor of all Archadia added, when Noah did not respond, and then, absently, “You are taking m’atha?”
“Aye,” Noah allowed, if stiffly. He had no appetite after the pills, though they were balm for the pain, and the warm buzz lasted through to the afternoon. Vayne sighed, as though at the willfulness of a stubborn child, but m’atha in its first hour dulled even emotion.
“How long?”
“A while,” Noah said, as insolently vague as he could. Since his brother had to return to Archades.
“An addict,” Vayne observed, inclining his head as a serving girl arrived, blushing as he smiled warmly at her. “Breakfast and coffee for two, my dear.”
“Sir, which? We have a selection-”
“Whichever you choose, my lady.” Her flush deepened to cherry red, and she all but skipped away, Noah noted, sourly. Vayne’s charm, at least, had survived death and usurpation intact.
“I have no appetite,” Noah reminded Vayne irritably, hands curled on his lap. “You need not trouble yourself at your expense.”
“I often do,” Vayne said, with his lazy, handsome smile, and two years ago, Noah’s heart would have stopped within him; like as not, under his helm, he would have blushed as deep as the serving girl. Pain crippled his answering thin-lipped smile into a sneer. “Your fingers, Noah.”
“Aye, what of them.”
“Put them here.” Vayne tapped the table with one gloved hand, and when Noah made no move, drawled, “Please.”
Put that way, refusing would cost him dignity and afford Vayne only amusement. With a show of reluctance, Noah placed one hand, palm down, on the table, and flinched when Vayne caught his wrist and dragged it closer, turning it palm up with uncommon strength.
A gloved finger traced a slow, intimate circle over his palm, and as Noah half-stood, in indignant outrage, about to jerk back his hand, he froze instead; the pain was gone, his mind starkly clear, and blessedly, he now remembered what it was like to be hungry.
He ate in a daze, trying his best not to look up at Vayne’s undoubtedly smug smirk, in silence, eggs and lathe leaves and fresh sausages, trying to pace himself without choking. Over coffee, bluntly, Noah asked, “How long?”
“How long?” Vayne repeated, his cruel smile indicating that the question had been understood.
“Before whatever you did to me wears off.” He knew Vayne too well.
Vayne inclined his head, amused. “Two hours, mayhap. Three.” In his golden eyes was unhurried malice enough to indicate that this was whim rather than ability.
“From whatever you took into yourself on the ship?”
“Venat, aye. Merging the remnants of her soul into mine has been quite beneficial.”
“You have become one of them?”
“In a sense. I left a simulacrum to battle my brother and the Lady’s party on the Bahamut, while I departed to study the lifestream. It is,” Vayne added, distantly, “Very beautiful. I can see why the others concerned themselves so very much with it. ‘Tis a pity that they see only the lifestream, however, and not the sum total of what it forms.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Of that I am aware.” Vayne said dryly, and took a sip of his coffee.
“And if you think that because you can take away my pain I will follow you-”
“Rather,” Vayne interrupted, so very benign, “You should ask yourself why I should ask you to follow me.”
For that, even after half a night’s restless thought, Noah still had no answer.
III
Stubbornness fueled Noah’s determination to go back to his ways, and two nights passed in an aching crawl, the effort taken to ignore Vayne’s peripheral presence growing ever more difficult. On the third day, frustrated that the mail was late, glaring at Vayne lounging across the street with his long legs primly crossed on a street stall’s bench, Noah grabbed the elbow of a passing guardsman.
“That man over there,” Noah gestured, pointing, “Is Vayne Solidor in disguise.”
The guardsman glanced up, frowning, then around, then back at Noah, disbelief and irritation turning to pity. “You’ve had too much sun, good sir.”
“No, if you’ll only look, past the hair-”
“Sir,” The guardsman added, as politely as he was able, “Please unhand me.”
“I must apologize,” Vayne said pleasantly, behind his shoulder, “This man is a friend of mine, and pranks are one of the few pleasures left to him. The war, you see. Could you find it within you to forgive him?”
“Oh, of course,” the guardsman said, taken aback. “No offense was taken. Good day, sirs.”
Noah watched as the guardsman walked away in a welling sense of futility, then he flinched as Vayne idly drew a circle against the small of his back. Temporarily freed of pain, Noah straightened as much as he could, twisted around, and threw a punch, but Vayne had dodged, neatly and economically, gloved hands clasped behind him.
“Five hours,” Vayne observed, and sauntered back to the stall even as Noah shuddered. He spent the time curled defiantly in bed instead of walking about town, half-awake, vaguely wondering if his brother had finally gotten along with his charger.
His brother’s letter, arrived on the morrow, answered a wry no to that, as well as another extensive and slightly obsessive list of what Basch had done to date in an attempt to win Hunter over. Noah had to smile, even with the gil wrapped in the letter and the ever cautious, awkward invitation at the very bottom that asked him back to Archades.
On his first reply, Noah began a line with Vayne is here, grimaced, crushed the letter, and started again; this time, going to Balfonheim, hesitated, crushed the second, and sighed. A mouthful of water and m’atha pills, and he took sleep in lieu of any active inspiration.
He woke to Vayne in his room, leaning against the plain table, going through his letters, looking so very natural that for a long, stunned moment, Noah could only blink. Then he lunged, hands clawed, snarling, only for Vayne to twist aside, drag his hands behind his back, and force him back on the bed, sitting primly on his back and his spine and flanks flared in fresh agony.
He’d taught Vayne that, Noah remembered, through the haze of pain. Evidently, the man still loved his irony.
“Not Balfonheim?” Vayne’s deceptively playful lilt only made Noah sneer against the cotton sheets, breathless and past fury and bitterness into utter weariness.
“You know I will follow you. Even if you could not help me. Even if you did not ask.”
“At the very least,” Vayne’s pity in itself was bladed, bled, as he took the balled papers in a hand, incinerating them with a glance, “You had thought not to. Have you an answer?”
“To why you would ask me to follow you?” Noah allowed himself a bark of harsh laughter. “As before, the beginning. You find me amusing.”
“As before, mayhap so.” Vayne traced a circle between his shoulderblades, then a long, blessedly cool line, down his spine, to his wrists, then he curled lightly to his feet. “Disrobe yourself.”
“Bastard,” Noah said, wearily, though he complied.
“Sit up.” Vayne made no move to help him, inspecting instead the ugly knots of poorly healed flesh, the jut of a twisted spine, scars and burns writ long before Basch had found him in the wreckage.
“Can you fix it?” Noah asked, hesitant, as the silence stretched, felt Vayne smirk behind him.
“I have no need to.” Fingers pressed down against his back, over the twist of bone, and traced a downward triangle against the arch of his rump.
When Vayne entered him, slow and deep and sure, after, Noah bit down as hard as he could on his lower lip, the cry on his tongue jarred shut against his teeth.
IV
Balfonheim, Noah wrote, is pleasantly cool.
He balanced the paper on a book in his lap, shoulder against the wall, Vayne curled and oddly enough, asleep around him, the press of naked flesh oft ceding to an alien texture akin to warmed metal. Seagulls called from perches atop posts along the marketway outside, the scent of spice leaking through even the barred windows. Slicked, sated flesh pressed against his hip.
As to Hunter, I have often found success in positive reinforcement. The pen paused, as Noah’s lip curled, faintly, Eventually, even the most recalcitrant animal will learn to accept its master.
A curve of flesh against his thigh; Noah looked down, but Vayne still seemed asleep. Shakily, he crumpled the letter, tossed it for the bin, and took up another from the stack beside Vayne’s wealth of now pale-blonde hair, felt his master stir.
“To your brother?” Vayne asked, if husky from sleep. Occuria, even half Occuria, Noah was sure, likely did not require such mortal cycles, but Vayne seemed intent on clinging, as he said once and so very dryly, to his primitive impulses.
“Aye. Ser.”
“Hnn.” The lithe, too-perfect body yawned. Vayne had not yet decided what next to do, despite his cavalier surety, though he had ‘plans’, and as before, as always, with that Noah was instinctively content. A shift, another stretch, and Vayne was still again, his breathing evening.
Balfonheim, Noah wrote, grimly, is pleasantly cool.
-fin-
.