ellnyx (ellnyx) wrote in kinkfest, @ 2008-11-16 12:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | a: logistika_nyx, f: final fantasy xii, p: basch/vossler |
skin and sand [ffxii, basch/vossler]
Fandom: FFXII
Title: Skin and Sand
Characters/Pairings: Vossler/Basch, Fran, Balthier
Rating/Warnings: M, offscreen violence/rape
Word Count: 2930
A/N: Heh, the plot in this one wandered off to happier times, methinks.
Other: For kinkfest prompt, Nov 16 - partner rape - 'Betrayal is in the eye of the beholder.'
.
The sandsea shrieks, a barrier of sound, sand and storm.
Vossler sets his forearm across his eyes, vambrace taking the worst of the blast, and strides across an earth turned to treacherous tide. He stumbles against the spray, curses for his fall; he spits sand. Before he can close his lips, he earns himself another gritty mouthful of Dalmasca. His mouth waters to match his eyes.
The bluster's density renders their camp into distant shadows and shapes. Vossler chooses his post to watch the north approach; the Dalmascan boy keeps watch to the south. He crouches where a long-fallen girder angles against a concrete plate. His heels dig into the sand. He hides his face in his hands, for protection. The storm still shrieks through this shallow shelter.
Vossler pulls his palms away to rub them through the sand, then against his thighs, then against each other, again and again, dry-washed rough and raw where callous does not cover. His racing heart will not quiet, the rhythm of fight or flight clear in his ears against the white howl of the storm.
The sand does nothing but abrade. Vossler still smells of blood, and of Basch.
.
The space is narrow and thick with blood's stench. Basch's left shoulder abrades against a fallen mass of concrete on one side, his fingertips touching the wind-taut thrum of tent on other. Basch stares for long, thoughtless moments. His heart's beat is rapid enough that it sounds like a man running. Basch breathes, and hurts; he breathes until hurt should subside; he breathes, but he still hurts.
This is not the cage. This is not the cell. Someone put a pillow under his neck, one made of two shirts and two shorts.
Basch almost smiles.
When he stands, Basch clings to the concrete's solidity against the vertigo. His mouth is full of blood, his chest and thighs wet. He applies the blanket's corner to tend himself. He is embarrassed, then, and wry, and irritated; this is bad with brutality and not the renewed novelty of engagement. He will need healing. He has no curatives within reach, and does not think Vossler left to play fetch. Such attentions between them are only applied on the battlefield.
Basch contemplates letting this bide, but the hurt rises with each racing heartbeat where he expected it to ebb. Fran, then, or Penelo; for that Penelo beds with Ashelia Basch decides he will go to Fran. His fingers are slow in separating his only clothes from Vossler's seconds.
The sandsea's tide throws him the moment Basch steps out of his shelter. He covers his face with his forearm and eases forward, pained. The ruin is scattered, and they took their shelter where providence afforded the best chance of standing the storm. From memory, Fran's tent was pitched over a mostly-whole room, half buried and in fortunate proximity. Basch crouches at that ruin, cannot hold, falls to bury his knees in soft sand, and fumbles to find the entrance fold. He crawls within without calling his arrival, discomforted by his lack of courtesy - yet surely even Fran could not hear his voice over the storm's vengeful howl.
The silence inside is abrupt, forceful, and spelled so. A small lantern glows; everything is gold and shadow. The air is heavy with the scent of fresh-brewed tea. Maps have been shoved to one side of the tent to clear space for his arrival.
Confronted by such, and two pairs of lantern-lit eyes where he expected one, Basch feels a rising rue. For that Balthier always beds in his own blankets when he is not absent all together, Basch did not expect the pirate's presence here.
Fran's gaze is unreadable, as ever. Balthier's expression is all too legible. As ever.
'Fran heard you.' Balthier cuts off all attempted explanation.
'I have judged poorly, it seems.'
Balthier snorts. 'Better to have bedded a baknamy, Basch, than that sand-born dervish. Anyone could have told you such an affair would not go so well.'
'I meant,' Basch says, 'that I had misjudged Fran's capability to distinguish voice over the howling of Dalmasca's vengeful sands. I apologise for any disturbance to your rest.'
'Apology is unnecessary,' Fran says. Her claws flick to the piled maps. 'We were not resting. We studied instead, our return route from Raithwall's tomb.'
'Of course,' Basch says, and inclines his head. 'Replete with Raithwall's relics, you will have a ways to travel.'
Balthier looks down, to where he cups his hands in his lap, fingers playing with rings. His lip curls, scorn writ as clear on his cheek as the streak of ink from his pen.
The tent is not large. The extent of privacy offered involves Balthier hunched in the far corner, eyes set away. Fran's hair is loose, lifted with the storm's static that a white corona forms somewhat of a veil when she sets her back to Balthier's. Basch does not know how to go about this. Before Nalbina, though tenderness had never been a part of what had him lie with Vossler, they never had such need for tending.
When Fran opens her arms, Basch falls into an unexpected, welcome embrace.
Fran's smell is animal, feminine, summer's tide of brine against the dry dust of Dalmasca. She smells nothing like blood. She arranges his legs in a line, his arms along hers. She exposes the wounds, only one limb at a time, and considers each bloodied slash, each knot of bruise with her fingers more than eyes. Chill wracks Basch as Fran's magick maps his skin, penetrating deep. She heals him with slow, shallow strokes, a refinement far beyond battle-craft; such is a strategy performed only on the deepest of wounds to ensure the surface does not close over the infection trapped within. Basch did not think he was so badly wounded, but of a sudden he is conscious of his own bloodied stink lying heavy over the brewed tea, Fran's fecundity, Balthier's cologne. He has marked the dirt floor as well as their blankets, stripes and spots of dark shining red. He is uncomfortable that he had the need to so seek their aid. Vossler should have been careful; or he should have been there, for after.
Basch's eyes droop with the rhythmic magick, dazed as his strength is consumed by the healing. The next spell strikes at the core of him. His injured flesh correspondingly tightens; he bites back the cry, too late, eyes suddenly wide.
Balthier flinches. Basch cannot see him, but hears the sharp intake of breath, feels the ripple from Balthier's spine through Fran.
'Is this a result of your own perversity,' Balthier asks, 'or his?'
When he tries to rise, a golden arm holds across his chest, firm and resistant. Basch is too tired to fight free. 'I did not think you were of such a limited compass to reject that some men will find their comfort in what another man offers. Did not the Archadians grant their name to this, as Archadian vice? Are not the pirates of Balfonheim known for their unbiased blankets?'
Balthier replies, mocking: 'Yet you misapprehend to which action I append that label. I had not realized you found such comfort in the spill of your own blood, Captain. Nalbina was somewhat of a holiday resort for you, then? A tailored pampering bestowed by your loving brother? Did I do so poorly to grant you freedom?'
'Ah,' Basch says, and feels suddenly helpless when he did not in Vossler's demanding hands.
Balthier moves then, his anger suddenly lost in the face of an equal helplessness. He is crouched and awkward for his height in this confined space, close enough that they must all touch. Basch watches as the man pours more tea, steam and scent rising in the tight space. The cup is thick polymer for longevity in travel. When Basch takes that offering all the warmth felt comes from the brief touch of Balthier's long fingers. The cup itself is cold.
Balthier settles himself on his heels, leather creaking. 'He could have killed you. Did you think to resist him? You're more than you were in Nalbina, and unbound now.'
'He would not have killed me. Why should I resist what I know so well? We are bound with history—'
'Oh,' Balthier rolls his eyes, his shoulders, 'history, well then. I'm quite familiar with how history excuses everything. War, imperialism, monopoly, rape—'
Basch chokes on tea. 'Balthier, this wasn't.' He cannot speak the word. 'Vossler has been a brother in my blankets for near as long as you have been alive. When you have fought, every day, for as long as we have, speak to me then of how a man measures tenderness as of worth.'
'You dismiss this as rough play?' Balthier sounds more angry than incredulous. 'Willing, were you? Did you spend yourself before he cut you up, or after? Impale yourself on his blade, hmm? '
Basch feels his brow pinch, the pain of angry response rising. 'I regret that I had the need to seek you out for aid. Nevertheless, I do not see that I have a need to discuss our habits with you.'
'If we are traveling with such treacherous violence,' Fran says, calmly, 'care must be taken to ensure the children and Lady Ashelia are not left unwary in Vossler's presence.'
'You will be silent,' Basch cries, 'the pair of you! I came to you rather than Penelo for the merits of your circumspection, only to find you speculate like moogles on the market! Vossler is not—he is not what you intimate with your talk of—' he still cannot say it— 'violence, and you do him substantial dishonor to name him so.'
'Basch,' Balthier says, 'think, man. Why are you protecting him? For your princess; do you take this for her sake?'
'For Vossler's sake. This has little to do with Ashelia.'
'Must one devoted allegiance render a man unswervingly stupid with regards to all his loyalties?' Balthier flicks his fingers, dismissive. 'We are better lawless, honest and free!'
Unexpectedly, the word burns instead of the insult: loyalty , just as Vossler spoke into Basch's ear, over and again. Basch reaches without thought. He finds his control when Balthier's warm palm wraps his wrist. The pirate does not break his grasp or gaze, both firm and steady.
'You cannot know what loyalty demands of a man like Vossler. He must be more than his actions, for actions may fail, weapons may falter. He measures himself by his successes, his outcomes.'
'If Vossler has such high standards set for himself, should they not apply in the privacy of his own tent as well as under his princess's eye?'
'You will not speak to Ashelia of this.'
'Speak or no, I'll not stand aside if this happens again, Basch.'
'Any more than Balthier could have stood by in Nalbina,' Fran adds.
'You will not speak of this,' Basch says again.
Balthier exhales heavily. 'Think, Basch. You plead for the sake of outcome over action. You forget about the last of that triad through which a man makes himself what he is: intention. What think you of Vossler's intention then, to buy your willingness at the end of a blade? Do you think he moves with aggression to win your love?'
'Not love. Loyalty is bought by pain, be it a gift of the whip or the blade.'
Balthier recoils. Whatever small honesty was found in this act with Vossler is too delicate to withstand the blaze in Balthier's eyes.
'You can't win when you play such games. For all his pretty words to the princess Vossler still thinks you a betrayer?'
'He tests me, as Nalbina did, that I will not break with the strain of what success demands.'
'I see one betrayer here,' Fran says, 'to take a given trust and turn it to a blade; you are too true for such a cold handling, Basch fon Ronsenburg.'
Basch's throat is thick with the words. He cannot speak true enough to match what he feels, but he strives. 'You both abandoned homeland for the matter of what you call freedom. You left your allegiance behind when you took the life of a sky-pirate; the sky is yours, the horizon limitless. You cannot understand what binds Vossler. What little freedom I can offer him, what assurance, I offer willingly.'
Balthier's disbelief does not shift; he folds his arms.
Fran touches the column of Basch's neck, the knot of his throat, and magick unravels the pain of his argument. The pallet and blankets are of no greater thickness than Basch's own, but they smell of Fran, and Balthier, sex and sweat, tea and ink. Basch curls. This is not sleep, but some kind of surrender, some small safety against what lies in the darkness behind Balthier's eyes. Basch drifts on the song of a spell.
There is discussion over his head; Basch's undone mind snatches for the words, but misses each time. By the time he wins back his alertness, Balthier crouches at the blood-streaked end of the tent, folding back his sleeves with grim motion. His forearms are corded with a gunman's muscle, long and firm. His rings and jewelry are already in a small pile at the door. He attends his earrings and adds them to the pile.
'He stands on watch,' Fran says. 'To the north of the camp most like in the lee of that first fallen girder. Be wary of discovery as well as the storm; Vaan is at the south end of camp, and the entities are roaming.'
Balthier nods and regards his fists. Basch reaches when the pirate makes to leave the tent, his voice thick and slow. 'Wait. Balthier.'
'I'll not offer a word of reasoning,' Balthier says, as though such a thing is assurance. He cracks his knuckles. His tone is bitter, words whip-quick and wounded. 'Vossler's face offends me. Such can be sufficient excuse for a man such as I to unleash the limits of my violence, as I am free of any loyalties but to my own selfish desires.'
'Do not,' Basch says, 'such a struggle is worthless effort, misdirected. We are so few; we must stand united against what will come.'
Balthier regards him for a long moment. His smile comes hard, fast, and unexpectedly sincere. 'I have freed you once already, Basch. It seems I must continue to play savior to your distressed manhood.' The pirate's smile widens to wildness. 'For Lady Ashelia's sake, I will leave our noble knight able to walk.'
Basch cannot disbelieve Balthier's threat. The pirate stands of a height with Vossler, if not of a breadth, but that is not of importance. They are fighters from opposite sides of the line, knight against pirate. Vossler demands a way, with force the only path he knows; Balthier is accustomed to finding a way through any route conceivable.
'Stay your hand, Balthier. Please.'
'Give me sufficient reason why I should.'
Basch lets his hand drop. He says what he should not. 'Because I would have you stay with me.'
Balthier and Fran exchange in a single glance more than what words could carry. Balther returns his rings to his fingers; Fran will not let Basch move, pressing him back to the blankets when he tries to assist her chores. She attends the tea, repacks the leaves and discards the dregs. Balthier bends to his maps, folding each with careful precision. They are well-organised, this pair, moving around each other with the efficiency of a single mind. There is little enough left to pack in the morning. Basch thinks, blankly, of his own tent, the mess of blood and clothing, the scattered armor, his fallen sword. The morning will be an uncomfortable rush to attend his own belongings.
The pirate douses the lantern before he lies back. They are as shadows, the only light that of a full moon filtered and faceted by the sandsea's overhead whirl.
Balthier is taut, heated tension where he matches his spine to Basch's. A couple of mild complaints, lazy with familiarity, and on Balthier's other side Fran sits to braid her hair, taming the wild tendrils that taunt Balthier's lips with tickling.
'Basch. Can you even rest easily, with me at your back?'
Basch considers, unsure of what lies behind the question. 'I will trust you with what occurred tonight, Balthier. With the princess, with my back, with this—I will trust you, Balthier. I must.'
Balthier's hesitation stretches. 'Your trust falls far too easily for me to find evidence of my own worth in that statement. I will strive that you do not find unexpected treachery in me.' His voice is steel, a sudden sharpness. 'If this happens again I'll not hesitate again. I will act. A man is made of three totalities: his actions, intentions and outcomes. Vossler cannot be lauded for the success of the one over the method of the other.'
The pace of the pirate's heart sounds that of a man running, too fast for his recumbence. Lulled by such a rhythm as well as his surrendered energy, Basch speaks against sleep's tide. 'We are all what we are, Balthier. Thieves, traitors and desperate men. What gives you any right or reason to turn yourself so swiftly to such a final judgment of a man?'
'Judge, jury and executioner,' Fran says, voice furred with sleep. 'Your eyes will always betray your heart, Balthier.'
'Fran. It's far too late at night for your mysticism.'
'All I intimate: you will never choose to look the other way. It is not how a sky pirate chooses to live.'
If Balthier has an answer, Basch does not hear it.
.