sheffiesharpe (sheffiesharpe) wrote in kinkfest, @ 2007-09-30 01:14:00 |
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Current mood: | sick |
Entry tags: | a: sheffiesharpe, f: final fantasy xii, p: zargabaath/zecht, september 29 |
"On Common Ground," FFXII (Zecht/Zargabaath)
Title: On Common Ground
Author: sheffisharpe
Fandom: FFXII
Characters: Zecht/Zargabaath
Rating: NSFW
Length: 5000 words
Prompt: "Fencing: a series of endless feints, and the truth behind them."
A/N: This did all kinds of things it wasn't supposed to do, like be pre-game by more than twenty years, refuse to be a literal go at the prompt, go on forever, and get finished late. Apologies, dear prompter.
There is a new candidate for the judiciary in Zargabaath’s class, a dark-skinned foreigner whose Archadian is better than half her citizens’ and whose excellence in field trials and weapons work makes him foil to Zargabaath’s position as the class paper genius—tactics, diplomacy, lore. A new cadet whose easy and biting wit divides the class on poles—he is liked or loathed on first meeting. But Zargabaath has read too much to fall prey there. He would have Zecht’s measure before he decides.
They meet first on Zecht’s ground: weapons practice. Zargabaath wishes it were anything but, and that is, for certain, why Magister Reynaud pairs them. Zargabaath’s edge work is lacking and he’s dismal with blunted arms. Zecht can wield anything, in either hand or both, but he is impatient, and that is Zargabaath’s one saving grace in physical combat. He knows how to wait for an opening.
When they spar, he learns that it is Zecht’s style to make openings. His forearms ring with steel on steel, and his mace connects but once to Zecht’s six. Zargabaath’s strike is a good one, perfectly timed around Zecht’s sweeping arm, and it staggers him a pace, but that opening does not present itself again. Zargabaath’s feet move only backward or to the side for the rest of the bout, and he will have bruises to match the one he left on each shoulder—Zecht is, apparently, ironic even in the salle. But Zecht does not mock him, as he has others, even in jest. In the changing room, he thanks Zargabaath for pointing out his poor guard and tosses him an ice compress. Zargabaath is not ready for it—that is deliberate, surely—and the chill where it lands on his thigh prickles longer than it should.
Zecht disappears, then, for three days, dispatched as courier because Corlinne is already deployed. Zargabaath has never been asked to do that duty, and in truth he doesn’t want to, not even a little. But something about it stings when it is Zecht that Reynaud sends with messages for the newly-helmed Ghis. On the fourth day, late, so late even Zargabaath is getting ready for bed, there is a knock. He rakes his hair behind his ears—it’s not quite long enough to push behind his shoulder or to stay to one side of his neck, but long enough to pull back, and he usually does. He wonders who it is, though it’s most likely Tegan, who sometimes asks him for a book to read when he can’t sleep. He opens the door, and it is Zecht, still in his traveling leathers, eyes sleepless-sunken, holding a sheaf of notes, but almost smiling.
“Yes?” It sounds strange when it leaves his lips, a syllable too formal for one of his year-mates, but they do not know each other. They’ve exchanged nothing but the bruises and words from the other day, barely more the latter than the former, but Zecht sags into the door frame like they are friends. And like he’s exhausted.
“Did I wake you?” Zecht is looking at his sleeping pants, leans in to peer into the room. “What time is it?”
“Nearing two.” He keeps late hours, but wakes early. He doesn’t sleep much, has never needed to. “What do you want?” Zecht is looking too closely at his narrow chest, leans too easily.
He straightens a little at Zargabaath’s tone. “There was a skirmish, ran into it on the way back. I have to make a report, and Reynaud won’t accept this.” He proffers the notes, all torn from his personal journal, none of the forms that make filing possible to be seen. Zargabaath glances at them, can only make out one word in three, though he knows its all Archadian. Zecht says, “I know you know how. You know everything.”
Zargabaath wishes he had his shirt because the cut of Zecht’s traveling clothes shows how broad his shoulders, how thick his arms, though Zecht cannot be more than two years older, if he is older at all. His stubble comes in white, on his chin and his scalp, but he is not more than twenty. Zargabaath crosses his arms. “And so you thought you would bring your paperwork to me, and I would do it at your whim?” He doesn’t know what makes him so caustic. He still doesn’t know Zecht well enough to decide, and he’s flattered, somehow.
“Would you?” Zecht’s grin is all cheek, though his eyelids are heavy. He steps into the doorway before Zargabaath can close the door in his face. “Please. He wants it by morning—staff meeting—and I don’t know—if you can just show me where the godsbedamned forms are.” He seems to startle himself with his own profanity—certainly nothing half so colorful as Zargabaath has heard him say to classmates—but a miscalculation, here; he is more tired than he lets on.
And that makes Zargabaath grin, despite himself, and he leaves his door open while he gets his shirt and a tie for his hair. He takes his own pen, too, because the pens in the senior cadets’ office are always a ragged mess. He closes his door behind him, makes for the office. He likes that Zecht has to hurry at first to catch up.
Zargabaath has the crystals lit, the inkwell uncapped, and the appropriate forms laid out before Zecht sits. When he does, it is with a heaviness Zargabaath hasn’t seen in him before, having watched him more often than they’ve actually spoken. When he picks up a pen—the nib is uneven, of course—his hand is slow. That Zargabaath knows, is not usual; he still has the purple and yellow dusting of old bruises on his shoulders to prove it. But Zecht starts to write—name, rank, commanding officer—and it seems neater than the notes. So he can do a fair copy. Zargabaath puts his hand on those papers, says, “May I?” and picks them up without waiting for an answer. The delicate scratch of the pen falters, and he looks up to see Zecht rubbing hard at his eyes with the heels of his palms.
He can’t stop the question. “How long have you been awake?”
Zecht does not bother to tick off hours on his fingers. “I woke up at dawn, the day before yesterday.” The ink blots.
Zargabaath puts down the notes, and Zecht shrugs.
“I would have slept, but the inn I was heading toward was smoldering by the time I got close. Trouble in the Kataran province. It looked local, but it didn’t seem prudent to stop for a nap.” He yawns, and the stretch that accompanies it crackles in the joints. He reaches for a clean form. Before he touches pen to paper, he says, “Tell me if I misspell something.” Zecht dips the quill, and Zargabaath takes the sheet from him.
“I’ll do it. Rest a while.” He takes up his own pen. “Staff meeting will be at eight, and you’ll have to be there for it, in case Reynaud has questions before he takes this to the Senate.” He copies what Zecht had written on the first form.
“I have to be in the staff meeting?” The question deepens the circles under his eyes, and they’re starting to purple even through his dark skin.
Zargabaath allows himself a smile. “Not exactly ‘in.’ You get the least comfortable chair in the Empire, and you get to sit in the hallway. You can’t hear a damn thing through the doors, they might deliberate for two hours, and if you get caught sleeping, Reynaud will skin you.”
Zecht’s look of misery is bisected by a yawn. “Voice of experience. I knew you knew everything.” Zecht rearranges his notes, sets them back down, yawns again.
“I don’t know how to beat you in the ring.” Zargabaath ignores the warmth in his stomach.
“But you would figure it out.” Zecht folds his arms, rests his cheek on them for a moment before he startles back to wakefulness. Zargabaath doesn’t want to have to tell him he should go shave, too.
“Truly, get some rest.” Zargabaath points to one of the couches.
“I can’t let you do this while I have a nap.” He stands again, braces his palms on the table. “For one, my handwriting is—”
“Not as bad as it first seems.” Zargabaath chances another smile. It’s a consistent mess: now that he can see, from context, that that particular scrawl is “province,” and that one, “league,” he makes easy sense of it. “Promise you won’t pace.” Magister Tillan does that. It’s like knives on porcelain to Zargabaath’s nerves.
“If I sit, I’ll fall asleep.”
“That’s the point.” As Zargabaath writes, he wants desperately for Zecht to sleep. He wants him not to stay awake all this time, and it’s certainly in part because there’s six hours until the staff meeting and the man’s exhausted and if he’s not sharp when he’s questioned, Reynaud will be furious. They are all a reflection on their teachers, and Zecht deserves to do well. It is sudden, wanting Zecht to do well in this. And still it presses heavy and insistent—he also wants Zecht to give in, now, to sleep, to his advice. He cannot shake the thought of Zecht’s muscled arms, his speed, his dexterity, things Zargabaath knows he will never have. But this he can do: can answer his questions, can write this report in a quarter of the time Zecht would manage it, can see, now that he knows Zecht’s angled hand, the crucial narrative that Reynaud will want. He excises it from the excited, over-thorough sprawl of notes as deftly as he’s seen Zecht slice through the obstacle course. He does not ask Zecht if he minds as he edits. He knows he’s right.
Zecht starts making tea. “I would have copied the whole thing.” It’s not a complaint.
“You’ll want to save something—setting the scene—for when you’re asked. They will want those details, but they will not want to have to read it. This is a preliminary report. If the Magistry deploys an investigative party, they will want the whole of it then.” A bit of hair hangs forward—he’d missed it earlier—and he brushes it back.
“Leave it deliberately incomplete? Are you trying to get me reprimanded?” Zecht plucks two mugs from the rack.
“Not incomplete.” Zargabaath glances from the notes to his sheet. “Economical. Put down what is necessary only at this point. And then you have your notes when there are questions. If the senior staff are convinced it’s worth pursuing, there will be a whole other report, one in which you’ll use all of this. Copy and recopy.” Zargabaath wants to tell him not to bother with the tea. He only drinks a particular blend of light-cured leaf, and he hides that container in the back of the filing cabinet beside the tea station. He’s not giving that secret away. Instead, though, he turns his eyes back to the report, turns to the next page of Zecht’s notes. The squeak of the filing cabinet hinges makes him look up.
“Too much paperwork.” Zecht measures it into one mug, throws only a few lemon slices and some sugar cubes into the other. “How do I know you’re not setting me as a fool?” He is not smiling.
“I would have let you copy all of your notes, had I wanted to do that, and saved myself the trouble of writing this.” The corners up his mouth turn up; he surprises himself. He is not given to teasing, but there is something appealing in it here, when they are alone, when they are on his ground. And Zecht snorts, pours hot water in both mugs. He puts them down on the table, but he still does not sit.
Zargabaath pushes out a chair with his foot, keeps writing. He is almost to the end. “How did you find my cache?” No one’s been drinking his tea; it hasn’t been moved except by his hand, until now.
Zecht finally sits. “I pay attention.” He sips at his hot lemon water, and Zargabaath wonders if that is particular to his people, or only to him.
“Am I suspicious, to warrant such notice?” This is only half-jest. There are enough intrigues, enough partisanship that sometimes it trickles down into the Akademy—whose parents are doing what, are there alliances being forged?—and Zargabaath truly knows nothing about Zecht. But while he’s certainly intriguing, he’s not ingratiating enough with anyone to have that scent of court drama about him. Only the scent of leather, and sweat, and lemon, and—and—dacca oil—that is what it is, and Zargabaath tries to remember his imports course. An extract of a dark wood, it’s rich and spiced and there must be some in whatever he treats his leathers with, because it’s not heavy enough in the air that Zecht is wearing it as cologne. He can narrow Zecht’s origins, now, he thinks, to an archipelago to the far southwest of Rozarria. Recently no longer independent. In Archadia, dacca oil is too rare to be used in anything but cosmetics, though there are poor replicas of the scent in candles, sometimes.
“Only interesting.” Zecht is holding his face up with his palm pressed flat to his cheek.
“Oh?” This is the last sentence. He fills in his own name where there’s a blank for “documentation assistance,” and Zecht will need to sign it. He keeps his concentration on making his full name fit in the blank without cramping any of the letters overmuch. Even by this city’s standards, it’s unwieldy. He tries not to be disappointed when Zecht doesn’t say anything more.
Looking up from the copy, he finds Zecht’s hand an inch from his ear. Zecht is pushing back that loose strand. It falls forward again; his fingers comb it into the smoothed-back whole. “Stay,” he says, and the hair does. Zecht wraps his hand around his mug again, breathing in the steam more than he’s drinking.
“You need to sign the bottom. Want me to read it to you?” He’s not sure Zecht’s eyes will focus enough to read at the moment.
Taking the pen from him, Zecht signs, a flourish to counterpoint his own neat script. “I trust you.”
Zargabaath drinks his tea.
* * *
Zecht never does sleep before the meeting, but Zargabaath crosses to the far side of the Akademy complex, wakes Zecht’s roommate, and gets him clean clothing while Zecht bathes. The roommate, a junior candidate Zargabaath doesn’t recognize, scowls until he sees who it is—apparently Zargabaath is recognized—and points him toward Zecht’s closet. Next to the uniforms, there is a suffusion of color, and he wants to look at the shirts, canary yellow and leaf green, but the roommate is yawning and he is not here to rifle through Zecht’s things. When he leaves, he feels sorry for Zecht. The junior candidates have much more rigid schedules, spend more time in their rooms doing regular assignments, and certainly the boy will be up and about when Zecht will need to sleep. But Zargabaath also knows that there are no empty rooms in the senior candidates’ barracks, and as a late-comer, Zecht was probably put wherever there was room.
When Zargabaath comes back with the clothing, Zecht is shaving, concentrating as hard as he can because showing up with cuts on one’s chin, and in Zecht’s case, scalp, is as bad as the stubble. Zargabaath stands in the doorway and watches how the muscles in his back shift with each movement of his arm.
“Thanks,” Zecht says, and Zargabaath hangs the uniform on a hook, but he doesn’t leave, and Zecht doesn’t ask him to, even though he takes off his towel.
He can’t watch now, he truly mustn’t, so he removes the tie from his hair and combs it with his fingers. He’ll pull it back properly this time, nothing missed, and when he finally lifts his head, Zecht is watching him. His trousers aren’t buttoned yet, and there is a dusting of white hair leading up from the band of his shorts. He comes close, finds another piece of hair that has escaped confinement. He pushes it behind Zargabaath’s ear, and his fingers are slow in a way that is not exhausted.
“For someone who never lets his hair loose, you’re awful at putting it back.”
Zargabaath puts his thumb on a tiny nick below Zecht’s jaw. No one will notice this one but him. “You shave your head and your face, and still can’t do it properly.”
Zargabaath sees the kiss coming, and surely Zecht is delirious with lack of sleep. And he is still slowed, but deliberate, purposeful in how he tilts his head, how his broad, brown hand is still tucked against his hair, and Zargabaath is glad, at least, that Zecht doesn’t have to stoop to do it. They are the same height. His mouth is citrus and warm, and Zargabaath opens his lips to him for a moment, then pulls back.
“Why?” Why him? Why now? “Why did you do that?” He can’t help but wonder if this is another kind of suspicion, even though Zecht said he wasn’t suspicious of him. This isn’t encouraged, not at all, and maybe it’s because Zecht’s a foreigner and he doesn’t know, or maybe here he’s finally mocking him, though as fogged and hopeful as Zecht looks, that doesn’t seem quite right.
“Because I pay attention.”
Zargabaath wants to be insulted. Pays attention to what? Zargabaath’s slightness of build? His long hair? How he is not going to distinguish himself on the front lines of anything? But he also remembers Zecht signing that form without reading it, and the first report to a staff committee, bizarre as it seems, can destroy a career. And he has been watching Zecht, has enjoyed doing that. And it is the last, he knows, that Zecht has paid attention to.
They kiss—only kiss, though Zecht tugs his hair free and Zargabaath learns the topography of Zecht’s scalp, the symmetry of it, and how the bone fades into the muscle of his neck—until the morning bells signal an hour to the meeting, until it’s only minutes until the other candidates start coming in for their morning showers. Zecht still hasn’t slept, and they both hope their reddened lips fade quickly.
Zargabaath walks with Zecht to the meeting, and though he knows better than to sit with him outside of the door, he stays in that hallway, re-alphabetizes the reference room while he waits. He’s supposed to be reading for his specialty exams, but he can make that up overnight. His day is his own because tomorrow and the next three days he is a liaison to the Paraminan delegate: he will translate everything, from the dinner spreads to the entertainment to idle chatter. He’s not good at small talk, but he can facilitate it for visiting dignitaries, because it is Archadian policy to conduct all of her business in her own tongue. He should be studying. He should have his dictionary, because there are still some more obscure food words that he ought to know.
The door opens and Reynaud says something, the door closes, and silence. Zargabaath moves Farshin ahead of Farthinshed on the shelf. He makes it all the way to M before the door opens again, and Reynaud’s voice, and Zecht says, “Yes, sir,” and the door closes. Zargabaath is out in the hallway before Zecht can even look for him.
“How was it?”
“Have to do the other report.” Zecht’s eyes keep drifting closed. He’d done well faking alertness at the door, but he is losing it again. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow. Get some sleep now.” Zargabaath doesn’t take his arm, though he wants to. Zecht nods, and when they get to Zargabaath’s door, he tries to keep walking. Zargabaath pulls him back. “Your roommate will be up, and the obstacle course is right outside your window. You can sleep in my room. I have to go to the library anyway.”
“You were up all night.” Zecht is leaning into the doorway again.
“I’ll have a nap later.” Zargabaath isn’t tired now, wants to kiss him more, and knows Zecht needs to rest. He opens the door and pulls Zecht to the bed. He waits until Zecht kicks off his shoes, then kisses him lightly, quickly, before Zecht can kiss him back. “Stay as long as you like.” He hopes Zecht will still be here when he gets back from the library.
Zecht stretches out on his stomach, curls his arm around Zargabaath’s pillow, and doesn’t protest any more. Zargabaath is pretty sure he’s asleep before he even closes the door again.
The longer he is in the library, books spread in front of him and none of them read, the longer he thinks he should stay there. If he goes back, he’ll wake Zecht. If he goes back, he’s going to want to wake Zecht. Zecht is sleeping in his bed. Someone is sleeping in his bed. Zargabaath slides down in the armchair, settles his head against the padded wing. Of their own volition, his feet come up, settle over the arm, and he touches his bottom lip with his finger. When he’d checked in the mirror, it didn’t look red anymore, but he can still feel Zecht against his mouth, can still register a certain tenderness on the inside of his lip, a new sensation. Something in him wants to be stung—Zecht assumes he has no one, male or female, to kiss him like he did, and why should he assume that? He knows he is being histrionic. If he had someone, Zecht would know. Everyone would know. He closes his eyes, wonders if he has someone now. Wonders how they will keep everyone from knowing. Wonders if they should. If this is even worth thinking about. He does what he’s never done in the library, though everyone else does: he falls asleep.
He stays until late afternoon, takes his Paraminan dictionary to the dining hall, and turns pages while he picks at his food. He’s not remembering any of it because he can’t hear the words in his mind. All he hears is the chatter around him—people know by now to leave him be when he’s got his books in the cafeteria—and someone mentions Zecht’s report, someone else says she hasn’t seen him at all, but no one says where he might be. No one is looking particularly at him. Zecht had. Zecht had looked at him very particularly, just before he’d kissed him, and the taste of bread and meat reminds him only that he is not hungry. That food is not what he wants.
The walk back to his room doesn’t take long enough; not yet clutches tight and low in his pelvis, and he’ll shower. That’s what he’ll do.
When he walks past the sink, the spot behind and a pace to the left, where he and Zecht had kissed for what must have been more than an hour, he feels his cheeks heat. He takes a towel from the stack, regrets not having brought fresh clothing, but no one else hesitates to walk back to his room in a towel. The memory of this morning makes him want to linger under the hot water, but the shower room is communal and Zecht is only down the hall. Zecht. They kissed right there, three inches between their bodies everywhere but where their mouths met and their hands were warm on each other’s necks. He wants to collapse those three inches. He doesn’t remember wanting anything else so badly, so urgently. Where his hair is starting to dry, it’s flexing into waves, and he lets it.
He returns to his room, quietly, and Zecht is still there, though his shirt is on the floor and his arm covers his eyes. Zargabaath pulls the shade, though it’s tending toward dark again, wishes he’d remembered that earlier. The distance between the window and his bed has never seemed so far, and he walks the greater length to the door and back twice before he makes up his mind to actually do it. He puts his sleeping pants on again, though—can’t quite trust the idea of complete bareness yet—and slides into bed next to him. He hopes this is all right. He can’t bring himself to wake Zecht, but the bed is narrow and the next time Zecht shifts, his elbow hits Zargabaath’s shoulder, right where the old bruise is, and Zecht’s eyes open, shutter twice. He doesn’t look surprised at all, and Zargabaath is trying to decide how he feels about that when Zecht speaks, warm and comfortable, and he knows he likes that.
“What time is it?” His arm wraps around Zargabaath’s waist like holding onto someone in bed is not new to him, and Zargabaath tries not to think about that.
“You need a pocket-watch.” Zargabaath reaches out, and his hand fits neatly on Zecht’s ribs. He splays his fingers to settle in the spaces between them.
Zecht’s arm curls him closer, until they’re pressed chest to thigh, the distance collapsed more easily than Zargabaath imagined it could be. Zecht’s eyes blink black, and Zargabaath wants to see this, doesn’t want to lose it to the falling darkness. He reaches for the bedside lamp, and when he turns it on, Zecht winces against the light. An opening. Zargabaath puts his mouth on Zecht’s, ignores the sleep-sour for the way their tongues remember ten hours ago.
Zecht’s leg pushes between his, the hem of his undershorts palpable through the thin cotton of his own pants. There is a curl of unfamiliar fabric around Zargabaath’s toes, tangled with the sheet—his uniform trousers. Zecht has been sleeping in his bed in nothing but his underwear. Without knowing where the boldness comes from, Zargabaath rolls on top of Zecht, holds himself up on his arms. He doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable, but despite not wanting to be too heavy on top of him, he cannot put any distance between their hips. There, he can only press down more. Zecht’s hands come to his biceps, and his thumbs trace the lean lines there, like he likes them, even though the swell of the same muscle on his arms fills Zargabaath’s whole hand.
“Am I too heavy?” Zargabaath isn’t sure how he can speak, is a little shocked when he does.
“No.” Zecht’s hand moves to splay between his shoulders, pull him down, and the other rests where the top of his sleeping pants crosses his lower back, encourages the resulting hitch.
The hand high on his back moves higher, flexes in his hair, and their tongues slip more clumsily as their hips find more grace. The steady muscle of Zecht’s thigh is nothing like his own hand, and Zecht’s fingertips slide under the cloth band. For a moment, Zargabaath goes still—where is this going? he knows what some men do with each other, does not know the customs of Zecht’s home, does not know what Zecht expects--but Zecht’s hand goes no lower. He only holds, warm and close, closer when he kisses him and his lips slide to press beneath Zargabaath’s ear, when he pushes up against Zargabaath’s body. There’s warmth and suction, and he’s going to have a mark there. He’s never had one before, but he’s certain that’s what Zecht is doing, and the very idea of evidence of this goes straight to his groin. It means Zecht admits it happened—strange to think, he knows, as it’s happening—and Zargabaath bears down and forward and back all at once because everywhere is good.
When Zecht pulls away, his mouth still open and his lips curved in a grin. His tongue shows at the edge of his front teeth, like he knows how long it will take for the mark to fade, and maybe he does know from the way his shoulders are still bruised. Zargabaath can find no evidence of the blow he landed. So he does what it felt like Zecht did, mouths at the skin of his neck, and sucks, and he is surprised at the urge to close his teeth on the swell of flesh. Zecht is tilting his head to the side, letting him do this, and so he bites—not much, not hard, only to feel the resistance—and Zecht arches into him, exhales half a groan. Zargabaath pulls away to look, and he can see: there is a mark on Zecht’s neck, and Zecht liked it. He kisses him again, and they are pressed together, chest to thigh, and Zargabaath needs to pull away before he— And he tries to, but Zecht keeps him close with the hand in his waistband until there is warmth and wetness between them, until Zargabaath can’t not. He—they—his cheeks are red, but all he can do is slump against Zecht.
His hair falls forward, and he tries to shake it back, but Zecht tangles his fingers in it, looks at him.
“You should let this down more often.” Zecht’s rich skin still shows a flush.
Zargabaath lifts a hand to his neck, and he can feel the mark. He wonders how dark it is. “I’ll have to, now.”
Zecht grins. “That was easy.” He finally moves the hand on Zargabaath’s waist, touches his own throat, thoughtful.
“You had better hope your hair grows quickly. Long way to go by morning.” Zargabaath eases himself off to the side, rubs his fingertips over Zecht’s scalp.
“Might not be morning anytime soon.” Zecht yawns, stretches, and he hooks his arm around Zargabaath’s shoulders, keeps his hand gentle where it caps the bruise he left days before. “Since you won’t tell me what time it is.”
Zargabaath shrugs, feels his arm lift into Zecht’s palm. “It’s early yet.”