sheffiesharpe (sheffiesharpe) wrote in kinkfest, @ 2008-03-11 00:53:00 |
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Current mood: | tired |
Entry tags: | a: sheffiesharpe, f: final fantasy xii, march 10, p: ffamran solo |
"An Hour More to Wait," FFXII (Ffamran)
Title: An Hour More to Wait
Author: sheffiesharpe
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Character: Ffamran
Rating: PG-ish
Length: 1000 words
Prompt: Ffamran, kleptophilia—first time for everything
Ffamran curls the thick velvet of the library drapes around him, the garnet cloth pooled in ostentatious excess around his feet. The keys in his right hand pulls his wrist down, and he lets gravity have its ease. The cloth ripples slightly—he can feel the moving echoes lapping at his shoulders, rather than see them, here in the blackness of curtains, and his breath catches in his throat. Though it is late, and he checked twice before ensconcing himself here that the library was empty, Zargabaath has been known to come to the archive at all hours. Still, Zargabaath was due in the throne room tonight, and there is no inquiry to his presence, only the smothered dark crush around him. He will wait here until the nigh-midnight bells, then there is the small door to the next hallway, a private passage his father had mandated before Ffamran was born. It is necessary to have quick access to the library from the laboratory corridors, and from there, it is but one hallway to the confiscated goods hangar. At the midnight bells, the guard changes, and there is the space between the current guard walking to the central hallway to report to his replacement. Then the new guard’s trudge all the way back—plenty of time for Ffamran to fit the key into the lock, to use his father’s clearance code, and finally see what behemoth thing was shifted from the aerodrome to Confiscated under so much black canvas. It’s an airship; he’d bet his judgeship on it, and in doing this, he is.
If Judge Magister Zecht discovers this key missing before Ffamran can replace it, there will be murder. His, specifically, because Zecht will know immediately it was him, and in the dry-book scent of the velvet, the first curl of fear hits, twists cold at the base of his spine. He could be demoted for entering the hangar alone, court-martialed for the trespass into a Magister’s room, to say nothing of the theft and what he plans to make of it, if all goes well. There is, too, if he is to follow his own plan to fruition—dependent upon what was beneath that cloth—surely even an execution to be had. He’s seen hangings enough. The most civilized of empires must be most barbaric in her discipline.
He knows, were he only as intelligent as his position implies, he would go back, replace this key of Zecht’s, his own father’s library master key, too, would call an end to this risk. He clenches his palms on the flat disc of the hangar key, the dull steel warming, silent, conspiratorial in the dark. The clutch of fear shifts, low to his stomach, but the longer he stands there, undisturbed, undetected, the more he warms, too, and relaxes. His thumbs trace the round whorls of the key, the metal sleek and heavy, and though the bulk of his task is still in front of him—he will have to time his exit around the morning change, too, and still be to his own company by the dawn-bells—this moment, now: he will do this. Has already done it. This library will remain silent, he knows it, can feel it not only in his gut but in the sharp forefront of his mind. And this is why he cannot stay here, will not stay here in this place that chokes and stifles him, not when this mantle settles so easily around his shoulders. Through the curtain, he seeks the wall’s edge and leans, so that the fabric cradles, does settle about his shoulders. There is enough room, now, before him, that he can lay the hangar key flat on hand. He has nearly two hours to wait in this dark alcove. With the flex of his fingers, he flips the key up, enough lift in his fingertips to put it end over end, one rotation and balance. Were it a coin, his call would be heads. He flips it again, end over end over end over—heads again, or the deep grooves that will catch and shift the locking mechanism on that hangar door. There is no heads here; rather open and closed, success and failure, and he flips the key once more. Heads (success), now, he knows without seeing, and this is the kind of precision he is truly learning, the kind he cares to spend his practice on. The kind at which he truly excels.
Half a dozen times more, he tosses the key in the darkness, catches it on his palm, his fingertips, the back of his hand, of both hands; once, too, he catches it upright between his fingers, deft, sure, steady even here where he cannot see. With the action, the comfort of it, comes the calm, the remembering of how easily the lock on Zecht’s door yielded to touch. Even as he thinks it, he knows he’s flattering himself; what it yielded to was the magicite pick he’s been working on for months, simply to see if he could make it work—but still. His hands. His hands, cupping the hangar key. He flips it once more, and this time his fingers slip on the catch, slip but recover, and now he puts the key into his pouch. It wouldn’t do to drop it, to be fumbling in the fabric pooled at his feet for the one thing he must have to make this work. The metal hangs solidly against his thigh, the pouch swaying sibilant on his trousers-leg, a caress, a reminder, again, of how close this is to working. He puts his hand between the cloth-covered key and his own leg, to still it, to silence, and though his hands are hot, his palms are dry. They make no sound on the material, but he cannot help the fractional sigh of his own lungs. The heel of his hand presses warm, familiar against his groin—this will work, certainly will work, has to work—and there’s more than an hour left to wait.