even better than the real thing [ffxii, basch/balthier/noah]
Oooh, not late by US time! ^^
Title: Even Better Than The Real Thing Author:logistika_nyx Characters/Pairings: Basch/Balthier/Noah Rating/Warnings: NC-17, object insertion, double penetration, insinuated incest Word count: 4100 Prompt: Nov 18, Gabranth/Balthier/Basch - toys - how much can you take? Other: Noah lives AU, post game.
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One of the few things I could say, off-hand, about being placed in such an awkward position: it would have been easier to take had I not been bound face down over the back of my own dearly lamented father’s toppled greatchair.
I once heard, some long months ago, that his ill-named Excellency Larsa Solidor saw fit to gift his loyal hounds with the Bunansa estates, auctioned courtesy of my absence and the clear claim of a cousin's line. It did not mean much to me until I found myself so bound, studying intimately the midnight and gold of the gilt-woven rug that graced my father's study. They took such care, these brothers, to keep my old house in the exact state in which I had left it. I wondered if such preservation of the past was due to their own disenchantment, an underhand rejection of this Emperor's likewise underhand gift, or if some nostalgia motivated them so. Perhaps they had even asked for such a thing, ever of a want to tend to everything I would abandon in my wake. Regardless, to recognise this study was highly disturbing; even more so on the morrow when I woke and recognised my father's old bedroom.
I am not a man to look at the dark side of a cloud when the skyward face should glow so gold: the upholstered back of the chair proved as well cushioned as the seat. Fortuitous, indeed, for the twins had kindly deprived me of my pants in preparation for their games.
It began with a misguided attempt on my part to try the Ninth Archadian Ministry for that most precious of the intangibles; information. A dear friend in Balfonheim found himself with an unexpected order for his neck to grace Archadian rope, thus I, ever the gentleman, did risk my own on his behalf. It was not an excessive risk on my part, I will admit, for I am not a man for excesses. In Archades as in Balfonheim I would be surrounded by those to whom my neck was worth indefinitely more whole and flexible than broken with the rigors of rope.
--or so I presumed, before being struck down by a spell. It was a vicious ache in my neck that greeted me on my awakening, the rigors of rough-bound rope about my wrists containing my violent flinch on realising the familiarity of my surroundings, if seen from a somewhat unusual perspective.
'Balthier,' came a voice, a captain's familiar gravel rendered so rough from shouted orders afield.
'Ffamran,' said the other, flat with years of confident, unbiased Senatorial address.
It had been two years, but still, their voices, both my names on their tongues; I cannot lie at what wistfulness swelled then. I tugged at my bonds, the veins of my wrists tight and throbbing with my rising pulse.
'I,' Basch said; 'We,' Noah growled; '--thought you smarter than to be caught filching from the Ministry.' I had to crane to watch them circle my unwilling recumbence, each movement instigating a twinge of pain. 'Clumsy, Ffamran,' Noah continued, heavy with familiar disapproval. 'I trained you for more.'
'A trapped alarm,' I speculated, 'and silenced?'
'Also, you left a window open,' Noah said, and tapped my bare heel with his boot. 'Footprints in the flowerbed that we had to erase, and dirt on the windowsill to match that caught in your boot. You must clean up after yourself if you would play such games. I know I taught you better. Did you wish to be caught, Ffamran?'
Basch regarded this exchange, one born of my long association with Noah and his most callous of teaching methodologies, with a distressed silence observable in the scuff of his shoes across the rug's pile. He said, sharply: 'It's Balthier, not Ffamran. He chose his way, brother, and we swore to abide by his right to choose.'
Where I perhaps expected a rising rebuttal, instead Noah said, 'Balthier. Such an offence is punishable; you know the law. We are within our rights to enforce punishment or pardon your presence, dependent on what we see fitting.'
‘Had I the possession of two heads,’ I tried, diligently, ‘I would gladly offer both for your providential decapitation, my lords Magisterial, but in the face of that blithe impossibility I would prefer to keep my life and my liberty intact.' As much of an indignity as this was, bound as I was, I spoke with practiced grace. 'What may I offer instead?'
‘Ah, and he offers,’ Noah mused, his boot resting briefly on my buttock, 'as though a thief would ever consider trade instead of merely taking what he wants, and leaving.'
From this low the most I could see of him was a well-turned calf. Noah moved out of my eye’s range to the left; Basch stepped again into the periphery to my right. Well I knew these two. They sought to rile me with their casual misuse of terminology - I may have thieved, but I was no thief.
‘Strange that you would so offer,' Basch bent to smirk at me, soft-eyed and sharp-lipped, 'when all the world knows as well as I: the sky pirate Balthier takes.’
'As I have also known, brother,' Noah said, 'and for far longer than you ever had the privilege.'
Now, these men, whom all the world will know I have loved and badly for the matter of my inconstant nature, had not loved each other as brothers for nearly as long as either had loved me. Noah had the sullen grace of my tender years; Basch had the delights of my willing and intense mature participation. They could not have considered well the contrast of my involvement, quite distinct between the two.
More than the matter of my bounty, so bared, lay between them. Two wars set many an unsheathed blade to complicate any neutral ground these brothers could have found. For the war's end, these once-sworn enemies had set aside their swords to embrace what unified intent lay at the core of their beings: peace. That such a thing meant embracing each other - I could see, even after two years, they were less comfortable with that. That they both desired the same thing was undeniable; they were so alike, these brothers of one birth, and I uniquely positioned to know.
That they both were equally assured that only he knew the way and his twin wandered lost; as clear as a stormcloud's swirl.
Noah's last words were spoken with the steely sound of a sword's strike. Basch sucked a sharp breath, but Nalbina had taught him lessons Noah had never learned. When I expected (and somewhat anticipated) the pair to commence their duel over my bowed neck there and then, instead Basch held his silence and Noah, unbelievably, apologised for his tone.
'Beautiful,' I said, truly surprised, 'I would applaud but that you've bound my wrists so firmly. Ah, it is always so beautiful to see a man learn how to let go of his past. Discard that old weight, my lords Magisterial; we can all run that much faster without such a burden!'
'This letting go of things,' Basch said, wry. 'You are experienced with that, I know. You travel uncommonly light for a thief.'
'An uncommon thief,' I replied. 'The greatest thief, to take both your regard and your brother's, and escape without injury, no? Your memories do not weigh on me that I cannot travel lightly when the urge so takes me.'
A silence fell then. The indignity of position was beginning to wear on me; the race of my heart a prelude for the act that would invariably follow, pantless and prostrate. This kneeling was no prostration of my spirit, mind, for that I truly enjoyed bedding this pair, but rather my discomfort was for this uncomfortably prolonged rehearsal.
The twins continued to circle; about me or about themselves?
'Come now,' I suggested, 'it is deplorably rude of you to entertain me in my own house with but a single chair offered for the state of my ease. Will you lave your punishment for my presumption upon me that I can rise and treat with you more appropriately? Have at me, gentlemen, I grow weary of your bondage!'
'As though you could ever speak of appropriateness with such a request rolling from your tongue.' The sternness of Noah's disapproval sounded a mask for mirth. 'Your presence here presents us with an opportunity we shall not ignore.'
'Yet you have done so well at ignoring such opportunity so far, lords Magisterial.'
I distinctly did not wriggle my arse in the air whatever Basch's unsubtle utterance indicated; Noah spoke as though I had not, a habit well learned for his long-past role as my mentor. 'We would be loathe to cripple your nature, Balthier. A thief must take his toys and run.'
'Oh, aye,' Basch said, joyous; that one could find humour even in the lattice of scars upon his own shoulders. 'You must walk where you will, Balthier, we can admit that.'
'Reassure yourself with the sky, yes, and the gilt light of dawn on the sky side of a cloud. You must walk where you will.'
'Or run,' Basch added, 'or fly.'
'To the ocean's edge,' Noah said, 'and you may listen to the waters conversing with the shore, that babble of the only children you will ever know.'
Basch's hand combed through my hair, rough and not unaffectionate. 'The rain will tell tales on the Strahl's hull, and you will be there to listen.'
'Balthier, ' Noah said, fondly despite his unfamiliarity with the name. ' You will lose yourself, but not in what was. That is past and gone; buried, as all three of us have been buried in rumors of our deaths. We are alive: and this is now.'
'I know you,' Basch said, 'I do, Balthier, however brief our affair. Loosed, you will roam city streets where the whores hang from the streetpoles like ganglia from bone.'
'Basch.' Noah laughed; I marvelled, for I had not known he knew how. 'Set your sword against me whenever you will, and I will greet you with open arms after; I doubt our brotherhood the most in moments as these. Ganglia is not an appropriate term for any a poet's attempt at wooing.'
'Your mother bore me too,' Basch rebutted. 'And first; you have the way with words.'
'Speak not of matters of firsts or seconds to me,' Noah said, lofty, 'we agreed on that; neither of us, first or second, but the same. In any case, I was no pain to our mother after your bullheadedness.'
Basch ignored that strike. 'On the matter of ganglia: Balthier's preference, when he pays to spend where he will, is ever for the lithe and twining lanky youth that would swing about the streetlamps down on Balfonheim's docks of rough trade. "Ganglia" is entirely appropriate terminology; visceral as it is.'
'Are you,' I managed, somewhat horrified, 'attempting to woo me with impromptu poetry, or have me swear off my whoring forever?'
'Is it working?' Basch grinned wide enough I could hear it. 'I thought we did well enough, to a point. You do so like your words, Balthier. We would have gift-wrapped them for you, if we could, poor an offering as we could muster.'
My wrists were raw; soldiers were ever of a penchant to expound on their unholy knowledge of a man's interior construction. Ganglia. How much more I could take of this form of lovemaking was dubious. 'I do distinctly wish to cover my ears, if you could loose me while you toy so enthusiastically with my mothertongue.'
'But that,' Noah said, 'to loose you rather than losing you - is precisely what we are trying to articulate, Balthier. Two years, and you come to us only now. We do not want to lose you again nor do we wish to chain you against your nature. You, pirate, will let your lanky whores touch at things, and touch at you, oh Balthier,' Noah's hand curled on my ankle now, Basch's about my neck, and for all their talk of bone and flesh I shivered, 'but they will not trap you. You will think you remember us, every a time you lie with another, and you will lie with another for that is your nature - the memory is still ours. We will not bind you against your whim; but if you have want to bed with us, you must accommodate our whim also.'
Basch added: 'We will not risk being set against each other.'
With the shadow of one twin to my fore, the other to the rear, their slow-circling motion entirely without hierarchy - a pure paradigm of confusion --
A painful logic creased my brow, clarity come shockingly.
'The both of you,' I whispered, 'at the once?'
'A thief does not trade for his freedom,' Basch said, near-laughing now. 'He takes it all, if he wants it.'
'He takes everything,' Noah said, his voice rough to match the fingers rubbing along my thigh. 'As much as he can hold.'
'I can't. The both of you? I would offer my mouth to attend but that neither of you have shown much appreciation for any skill offered by a man's tongue.'
'And mar your face with that lower of fluids?' Noah asked. 'No, Balthier, oh no. Some streetwhore taken in an alley, perhaps, we could treat so disrespectfully, but we will never ask that particular indignity of you.'
'Curse your damned twisted Landisi mores. You'll ask near every other indignity of me instead! Will you break me, to take the pair of you together?'
'We will temper you for it, if you will trust, and allow.' Basch broke the circle the first, moving beyond my periphery. A drawer creaked, poor-oiled wood strident against runners.
When Basch returned to kneel at Noah's side, their hands pressed my thighs, sliding and rough, kneading. The touch was too familiar, for all it was doubled and years since my last recollection, intense for that startling coverage of skin that four palms could span. My mouth was dry; some perverse excitement built deep in my belly; of a sudden my mouth was watering. Basch had set something down at Noah's side, heavy and clinking. My legs rolled open without conscious intent.
Neither of those brothers had ever treated words as approbation; words had always been such weapons between them. At the feel of hard and cold, broaching, my involuntary moan was enough.
The cushioning across the back of the chair proved most worthwhile, for I ground into it with each near-uncontrollable flinch away from their slow-inserted insult, still so hard, foreign, even with copious amounts of hand-warmed oil.
Where these brothers had found themselves such an array of implementation, laid out in order of size increase with a precision attributed to Noah, I knew not. Fear kept me from asking. What if they had an answer? Did they plot, perhaps, for such a thing, or worse -- did they apply such things on themselves, or each other?
The longer I thought on that latter point, the deeper their current insult slid to work me open, and the more applicable my stray thought seemed. I could imagine Noah's clipped consonants as he stated his case, Basch's emphatic nod to supplement: those that shared blood could not share other fluids with each other for the dictates of whatever strange Landisi law that also kept them from loving my mouth; the application of an intermediate device was essential in their relations with each other--
I groaned, a panicked pitch that sounded not my own voice. Basch's breath came sudden and heavy, Noah's fingers pinching. The thought that what lay in me now had once been in Basch, or in Noah -- oh, would that I could have lost myself in the cradle of that cushioned chair, but on first ascertaining my arousal (they were always surprised I enjoyed such a conjugation) Noah had bound me with thin braided leather, tight against any involuntary release. Wise, perhaps, with his added years, for without my desire I did not think I could tolerate their exploration.
'Wait,' Noah said, soft-voiced where I knew his eyes would be diamond shards, unyielding and patient with the years. 'Oh gods, wait for him, Basch, wait.'
'The next one, Noah,' Basch said, intent; I could picture the look in his eyes when he spoke thus, voice hard but eyes full of hidden, immediate hunger. 'It's yours.'
The habit between these shift-changes was thus; they would withdraw, and their paired fingers would slide within me to test my tension; for the touch of their warm, flexing flesh where there had been but resistant hardness I could barely swallow my sounds or stifle them against my shoulder. 'No,' I said, or tried to through the shudders, 'wait, Basch.'
'Are you well?' Hands, greased, rubbed along my legs and my spine, not at all soothing for the matter of implicit demand.
'Well enough,' I said, 'for that we started before midnight and it seems to be nearly dawn. How much longer will I be bound and beholden to your perverted whims?'
'Such a question,' Basch chided, 'if you cease your writhing, Balthier, and hold that there,' he pushed until I swore at him, aching, 'I will fetch you some water. '
'Tis the ills of society that set us so,' Noah said, again, apologetic enough Basch made a sound of dismay.
'This is not perversion for that we do not spill.' Basch spoke from his desk - my father's old desk. The sound of water pouring sparked in me such thirst I raised my head for the first time in hours, vision swimming. 'The only perversion of such a thing is found in unwilling application of force.'
'And are you unwilling?' Noah asked. 'Balthier?'
'Involuntary,' I spoke, 'or say acquiescent; oh gods, Noah, I could not ask for this, ever, but for you, the both of you, I cannot refuse it.' I did not laugh for Basch's instruction to hold. 'Neutral ground, hah! What a role for a man such as I to play. It seems the only answer for those of us turned to such sickness is to ask more questions!'
Basch knelt to feed me sparing water and regarded the blood about my wrists. Ah, soft heart for all the outward hardness: he made as if to unbind me. I shook my head.
'I cannot command my body here. I will turn, resist; thus, leave me so.'
His eyes met mine and slid away again. In him was such a strange, shy happiness, it could only be spoiled by being spoken. He kissed his fingers to set to my lips; I tasted oil, and wanted him.
'Ask all the questions you so desire,' Basch said, 'but I have only one question for you, Balthier. Will you take more?'
'Silence me,' I said, as steadily as I could, 'that I will not tell you no.'
It was Noah that cast that devious spell, Basch's fingers carding through my hair as the magick took its hold.
An hour before dawn I broke the chair.
I did not think I had the strength, ah, the exhaustion was paramount by then, more than desire or desperation, even; exhaustion, weepingly so, with their shadows ever across my spine. They tested me sorely, and still, still, they did not approach me with their flesh.
Their voices grew softer as time crawled past us, subdued for the matter of my silence and their own growing excitation. That latter I could not even consider for the selfish insanity that had me rutting sore and shameless against the chair. Their touches came with renewed thoughtfulness, fingers on thighs and spine, soft. The count of their touch within me was beyond my mind's desire to note, mostly for the edge of horror that tainted such a thing: fingers, fingers, too many! The present could not contain such expectations, not my own that I was so far past what I thought my limit, not their expectation either for that the matter of their birth and breeding had afflicted them with such sheer size of masculinity.
At the last they set themselves to open me together, Basch's hand to the top, insult curved to match Noah's offering to the lower; they thrust. Wrapped in silence and sweat, I died. Burst open, broken, peeled away like the skin of an overripe fruit, oh I died, lust battering against the binding about my balls, wrists hard and wretched against my ropes, shoulders heaving as my spine sought for any freedom at all, even to break.
The chair gave first, legs and crossbracing, for the sensation of where they split me overwhelmed all feeling of strain in my muscle that I pulled until it would be bone or rope or wood to break, and the old wood gave first. Surrounded by that splintering scream, I felt it when my body's abrupt means gave, died, the acquiescence of all limbs and parts no longer my own, but theirs.
Noah unbound me, peeled away the rest of my clothes; Basch lifted me from that wreck of a chair; for my height it took the pair to carry me to where they made their bed, or a bed, one of theirs: it was large and doubled regardless. All that followed came with the weird luminosity of sleep, seen through eyes that could not disbelieve for it was all a dream.
I spoke that, aloud, when the shock of having them both in me had subsided; Basch whispered in my ear, chuckling, 'You and your dreams,' and Noah bit the lobe of the other with the sound of metal on enamel, clinking.
It was beautiful in the dark, oh, beautiful to be thus, a source of their paired pleasure for that they could not find it in each other; an involuntary source, nevertheless, for that I could not move but to howl, and whimper, and curse my own inability to respond. They would daydream this, for days, for years; they would hunger for this, hoping for me to come to them again, but oh, they could not know how I would doze with the hope for this to come again to me, if only as a dream.
'Turn him loose,' Noah whispered.
In the dark, Basch unbound me from the fore; Noah's hand wrapped me to hold, his arm tight about my waist to reach; they were warm, flesh-warm, so much more than any form of their testing. In the dark, warm with voices and motion, alive with their quicksilver kisses that they would never call such, pressed closed lips across my shoulders, my neck, I felt it when Basch, or Noah, reached about me for his twin, and I but the churned battleground turned armistice land. In the dark, tears, and years, all erased by their improbable, impossible poetry.
Turn him loose, Noah said, and so loosed; I shuddered and clutched, felt their unison come as aftermath to my own.
They turned on a single lamp to tend me, to find water. The light blinded me, bleary-eyed and hurting where the darkness had been so sweet. Basch had his hair bound up for the heat, sweat penning stray wisps at his nape; Noah's nape matched those sweat-darkened scrawls for his want of a haircut.
Dawn came, and I slept briefly for the matter of too much indulgence.
Freeing myself from their limbs proved no small effort. Basch's leg over mine, Noah's arms about me; Basch's heel stretched to ghost against Noah's ankle, Noah's knuckles curled against Basch's chest. The heat was intense, lying between them. They slept with the surrender of trusting men, and no man should trust a thief in his bed.
I could have waited. Morning would prise their fingers loose, their plaything lost to the light of a new day. I could not wait, and so I worked myself free. Whether it was for, as they had so spoken, the matter of my own nature that could not keep me to the same bed two nights running, or for the sudden fear their embrace engendered - or even whether both fear and nature were born of the same long-past seed, I could not consider. I rose, I showered, I dressed. They had no mirror, for indeed, what need would they have for one?
Garbed in dignity and silent pain, I paused to regard them. Curled in that bed that could have been Basch's, or Noah's, or theirs, they still slept at arm's length as though I stretched between them. They would fight for what they wanted, these brothers, they would run, miles and mountains before they would know the prey truly lost, the game over; weary, when would they realise they clutched at nothingness, all games and toys meaningless, their hands only to fall on each other?
If there was ever such a thing as love at last sight, I felt it then.