ellnyx (ellnyx) wrote in areyougame, @ 2009-02-20 23:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | *final fantasy xii, author: logistika_nyx |
How Many Roads, FFXII (Balthier/Basch/Vossler/Fran, Noah)
Title: How Many Roads
Author: logistika_nyx
Rating/Warnings: M, none
Word count: 2000
Prompt: Final Fantasy XII, Balthier/Fran/Vossler/Basch: stuck in mud – 'You see, this is what happens when we let Balthier drive'
Summary: After it's made blatantly clear they're going nowhere, Vossler starts with that particular tone in his voice that says he thinks he's about to say something funny. By the third word, Balthier knows not to get his hopes up.
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After it's made blatantly clear they're going nowhere, Vossler starts with that particular tone in his voice that says he thinks he's about to say something funny. By the third word, Balthier knows not to get his hopes up.
'How many roads,' Vossler says, grinning, 'must a man go down, before he learns how to fucking drive?'
Balthier doesn't turn or otherwise rise to rebut, not because he doesn't want to but because Vossler looks for a fight like a seagull scavenges for cigarette butts. Instead Balthier turns off the engine, takes off his aviators, squints against the cursed brightness of a bloody sunset and looks over. In the passenger seat, oversized Diors hide most of Fran's amusement; she stays very carefully silent. Unusually so, for her.
'You hear that, Vossler?' Balthier hooks his aviators into the vee of his vest.
'...crickets?'
'That's the sound of no one laughing.'
In the rear-vision, Basch meets Balthier's gaze. Basch's eyes laugh, even if his lips don't. 'Not had much experience off-road yet, Balthier?'
'Had plenty,' Balthier replies, steadily, 'of experience, in all conditions, thank you. But experience does tell me to never attempt ambitious endeavors without the proper equipment. Like, oh, just saying, you know, an off road vehicle would have come in handy for driving across the middle of buttfuck nowhere, thank you, Vossler.'
Vossler kicks his door open. Usual methods of entry and exit are beyond the man. He hangs from the side as he regards the rear wheel, keeping silver-studded leather cuffs and incongruous steelcaps well clear of the sudden mud. 'You got a problem with my car or my country, Balthier?'
'Your country has only one hub of anything approximating civilisation and we're currently half a day distant from it and stuck in mud, that's my first problem with your country. '
Balthier opens his own door and leans out. Admittedly, though he's not going to admit fault, the ground looked solid, red-baked to brittleness. Solid red half-way up the rear wheel, now, the surface cracking under the car's weight to sink them in filth. There must have been rain recently; he's lived in a city for too long if he's forgotten what it feels like to live and breathe the weather.
'However,' he continues, before Vossler can get more than a snort out, 'nothing's wrong with your car. It's a good car. I like the sound system. But I do have to point out the complete lack of clearance, any form of torque conversion, low-gear option, reduction drive and air conditioning. Which is, mind you, conspicuously notable when you make us wear all this fucking leather.'
Fran stretches. 'At least the weather's pleasant enough.'
Vossler sticks his head back in the cab, a frown clearly apparent, but Basch speaks again before Vossler can. 'Unlike the atmosphere here. Keep your pants on, Vossler, I'll get out and give a hand--'
'Mmph.' It's as polite a form of acquiescence as the man ever gives. 'Watch you don't get your party clothes muddy, Basch. Your brother will kill you if you show up looking like a hobo again.'
Both of them swing out of the car then, unfolding with the awkwardness of big men who never take the back seat. Vossler slams his door; Basch cranks the window down before he closes his side. Balthier feels the corresponding rise in the car's level as soon as the two are out, and wonders if maybe they just got bogged for the excess weight in the rear. After all, the front didn't stick.
Balthier touches fingertips to the dangle of Vossler's keys, considering. 'You think I should try starting--Fran…Fran?'
Balthier looks where she had been, out the back, and resists the urge to vocalize. Fran whips her head around too guiltily. 'I'm listening.'
Basch folds Vossler's vest with his own and tosses them in through his open window, with a broad smile.
'Can't you wait til we get to your brother's house before get your kit off, Basch?'
Vossler straightens from where he's shoving uprooted shrubbery under the rear tires, flexes his right bicep, and kisses it.
'Oh God. Fran, will you stop encouraging…'
When Fran unfolds from the car, it's even more an unusual exit than Vossler's; in leather that tight she thrusts her hips out after her legs in a ripple like a wave, unfurling with her hands hooked around the frame for support, ripples up, and out, and up, and keeps flexing--until she's upright -- and then she stretches, curse her --
Fran exhales, a sound almost of relief, turns, follows where Balthier can't help but stare, and zips herself covered again. 'What are you looking at me like that for? The lighter the car the better.'
'Right. Of course that's why you're getting out; not for the view, or anything like that.'
'There's a remarkably comfortable looking shady spot just a few meters over there,' Fran says, mildly. 'And Balthier?'
'What?'
She reaches in one last time, flicks the rear vision mirror with a nail, and smiles. 'I'll stop looking if you do.'
'Turn her on,' Basch shouts, just as Fran retreats. Vossler straightens to slap a muddy palm on the boot, or trunk, or whatever they call it this far from nowhere, like a pompous hard-ass who knows what he's doing on this pseudo outback track instead of the city-born-and-bred magistrate he actually is.
The ignominy of being stuck like this shouldn't be so significant when surrounded by competence and muscle sufficient to alleviate the situation - but just the sheer fact they have to resort to muscle instead of mechanics has some not-quite-buried core in Balthier squirm with embarrassment. He just -- doesn't end up in situations like this, he makes a point of never ending up in situations like this, planning means he never ends up in situations like this: this is how smugglers get caught, when Nature strikes.
Of course, there's nothing in that boot that Vossler parades himself behind, because even Balthier's not brazen enough to try shipping something in the boot of a magistrate's car, but still. Still. The situation grates. Not so much being bogged, which in such a provincial country can't be helped--but rather, being dependent. On a pair of lawmakers, even.
The engine sings to life, smooth; Balthier checked water, oil, fanbelt, points, sparks, leads all before they left, but couldn't stake out the terrain as per his usual compulsion, Vossler being as vague as usual about their destination and Basch indicating only that 'it's going be rough,' as though that was anything unusual with the two of them involved.
Fran leans against her tree, eyes still fixed on the endeavor. Basch has positioned himself to the side and the fore of the right tire, the freckled skin across his shoulders pinking to match the sunset already; he cracks raw knuckles, ready to lift. Vossler is--
Vossler has, for some obscure reason, positioned himself directly behind the left tire, currently half bent and frowning under the car.
Balthier rides the clutch, right at friction point, and considers. City-born-and-bred, Vossler, and entirely unwary.
Motion at the corner of his eyes draws his gaze; Balthier meets Fran's eyes for a scant moment, long enough to see her shake her head, not in refutation, but in mild amusement. Basch, on the other hand, when he catches Balthier's eyes in that rear vision mirror, follows Balthier's sideways nod to see where Balthier's looking, and grins beatifically.
'Good to go,' Basch shouts, bless him, and hastily scrambles right back.
The unfortunate thing about the whole endeavor is that Vossler, prone to fixing blame on single antagonists, and likewise being a clear proponent of eye-for-an-eye punishment, decided that once splattered with flying mud from head to heel, his previously removed vest might as well serve an alternate purpose as a hauling device; thus Balthier deals with the sloppy chill of a shirtful of mud in his hair, currently still slinking down under his own vest and settling with clammy unfamiliarity around the crotch of his own three hundred dollar (stolen) leathers.
Balthiers deals with his sudden shirtload of mud with a blissful kind of smile because, well, this is Vossler's car currently mud-drenched, in both the driver's leather seat, and the diagonally opposite passenger's couch, where Vossler slouches, nearly naked after an attempt to salvage his own leathers, scowlingly unmoving.
'You hear that, Balthier?' Basch asks.
The engine-rich silence continues, as it has done for the full fifteen minutes after their bid for freedom succeeded. Balthier navigates to keep to the pre-existing ruts; truly, the clearance on Vossler's car is illsuited for this terrain no matter how skilled a driver sits behind the wheel. He wonders how wild Basch's brother's parties end up getting if they've got to be held this far away from civilization.
'The sound of no one laughing?' Fran replies.
Basch reaches out a hand, collects a palmful of mud from Vossler's hair despite the man's irritated shake, and leans forward to plant a precise print on Fran's breast.
'Oh, well done,' Fran notes, and thrusts her hand between Balthier's thighs to garner further ammunition.
Balthier tries not to startle. Her second hand goes in for more, nails clinking against the metal of his button fly. 'We're going to be late, aren't we? Someone should call your brother, Basch. Is there even network coverage out here?'
'You,' Vossler growls, unfurling at last from his sullen, mud-slicked silence to wrap ropes of red around Basch's clean shirt, 'dickhead, just keep bloody driving.'
'What the hell happened to you lot?' Basch's brother asks (and of course they're twins, Balthier realizes, belatedly). Noah stops the door before opening it fully, staring out suspiciously. For some reason Balthier's sure he'll find out soon, Noah wears an eyepatch even though it's Basch who has the vaguely threatening scar across his brow. 'You can't come in here looking like that. I distinctly remember sending out a specific dress-code in the email this time, Basch.'
'Not your brother's fault, for once.' Vossler's still sulking despite, well, despite; Balthier still has stray grains of sand grating between his teeth. Mouthing an apology might have been an easier way to cheer the man up. 'Balthier happened. Let us in.'
'You're Balthier?' Noah turns that suspicious eye Balthier's way. 'You look rather familiar, under all that filth.'
'Innocent of all said charges,' Balthier says, 'though I could apply the accusation of familiarity right back at you, ironically. As to the mud…' Balthier tries a grin, and strokes fistfuls of mud from his leathers, each splat making Noah's eyebrows rise further, appalled. 'Seeing as it was Vossler's ego that caused a matter of temporary blindness to cause, effect, and otherwise consequential circumstances, I name every grain of sand entirely his responsibility.'
'I swear, Basch,' Noah mutters, 'I'm going to stop inviting you if you keep bringing cock—'
'Noah,' Basch interrupts, fingers vainly trying to work the tangles out of his hair, 'I don't believe you've had the pleasure of meeting Fran.'
Fran says nothing, but smiles. Her red mask of mud cracks. Basch's brother even lifts up his eyepatch to look at her, up her, down her, carefully, before he smiles in return. For some reason, Balthier feels moderately offended.
'Let us in,' Vossler says again, and adds, 'We can shower.'
'The tap is round the back,' Noah says, 'use it wisely.' With one last look at Fran, he firmly shuts the door.
'By wisely,' Basch says, somewhat apologetic in his brother's absence, 'I'm presuming he means liberally.'
'Oh,' Fran says, 'I think we're all quite liberal here.'
In the silence of that cricket-filled dusk, Balthier meets Vossler's eyes. Everything holds, tensioned, for a long moment, and Vossler smirks, his intensions unfortunately clear as mud –
Balthier sprints to get to the hose before Vossler does.
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