the language of swords [ffxii, basch/vossler] Title: The Language of Swords Author: logistika_nyx Pairings/Characters: Basch/Vossler Rating/Warnings: NC-17 Word Count: 7889 Prompt: Final Fantasy XII - Basch/Vossler - slow or prolonged sex - "We both matter, don't we?
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Age is a place, not a time.
We enter this place without so much as knocking. Beware, we are warned, of breathing without an order. The walls will crumble about us.
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They are fresh to Bhujerba, one newly and one again. They stand on either side of twenty years of age, these two Knights of the Order. They discuss their weaponry and their apportion of men in lieu of admitting their presence in a strange city. They contemplate Rabanastre's distance, one ruefully and one regretfully, and do not mention the likelihood of return. Vossler speaks of nearby places that serve Dalmascan food and drink, but no name sparks in Basch a desire to consume.
Already, they have knelt shoulder to shoulder to offer their prayers to the midday sun now over Dalmasca. They have gifted the breeze with droplets of Dalmascan wine mixed with oil. They have sung their particular hymn, of the strike of swords and sweat's scatter onto the training court's dust. Their armour has been tended, repaired, oiled, tested and set on stands, ready for their early morning departure. They have meditated, slow breaths measured in unison until the world narrowed to hold only the sound of life.
This is how they wait for war, then, with a tension that denies departure.
They sit on their shady length of wall. Vossler rests his thighs on the edge of the brick and keeps his feet firmly on the floor. Basch sits with one heel swinging a rhythm, the other bent to make of his knee a prop for his chin. Basch shreds a fallen frangipani blossom and regards the sticky residue on his fingers. Vossler wears no expression: he sinks the length of his belt knife into the planter's soil behind him. The grains stroke his steel with a rhythmic susurrus reminiscent of the Sandsea's tide.
There is a particular silence that falls between soldiers on temporary reprieve, however high they stand, however low they kneel. Basch, not born to the priestly demands of this knightly role, would suggest filling the silence with further companionship if Vossler had not so visibly disdained their subordinate cohort's half-drunk pleasure. Silence holds an absence of topics that do not touch the threat on the horizon; tomorrow they ride. Basch cannot think of a way to broach conversation. Vossler does not try. No man should have to admit his fear to his fellows.
Bereft of other distraction, Basch looks at Bhujerba with interest. He wants Vossler to show him more than the circle of this safe port, their embassy behind them, their barracks within. The air is heavy with heat, incense and musky blossom. The scent makes Basch pleasantly light-headed. Bhujerba is rumoured as a city of sensation, tailored so already for the wife-less numbers of foreign miners present. Bhujerba rivals only Balfonheim as a soldier's desired port of call, for that every sensation is offered for sale. When soldiers see their deaths approach, all the sweat and stench of life seems so sweet.
Vossler would say: Basch is not a soldier, nor I; we are Knights of the Order, and live under order.
Basch would say: I was a soldier before I was a knight; and I was a man before either.
Basch slides off the wall and steps two steps forward, out of the shade. The glare makes him blink. He glances back once to ease his eyes.
Vossler follows, and regards Basch's covered neck, the heat extending his exasperation. The Order fought many a battle over those three territorial inches of pale Landisi nape. Basch would grow his hair as his father did, as all Landisi men do where they still live: a man's hair is a mane made of his pride. For that a knight must carry only his humility for adornment, Vossler and others of the Order have wrestled Basch to the floor to shave him; thrice in total, and once after Basch earned his Sword and should have known better. Vossler cannot pin Basch while on his own. He must allow the insult to the Order to bide. Humility is also a sword that strikes both ways; Vossler cannot admit he cares.
In Bhujerba the length of lock marks Basch more of a foreigner than it did in Dalmasca. Vossler does not lose him in the crowd.
Basch keeps back from Bhujerba's great falls but his eyes still seek dark faces and sun-stripped hair. Basch is a son of flame: he has always had a penchant for foreignness, consuming all newness as fuel for existence. Vossler is a son of the earth: all Vossler longs for is home. It is a feeling that does not leave him even in Rabanastre. Experience has taught him home is a time, not a place, and time past cannot be revisited.
When they step through the port's high gate, they walk side by side. The architectural line marks a boundary whose truth is not felt for several hundred paces. Of a sudden, they are in the bowels of a city. Vossler misses a step.
By but half a pace to the fore, Basch leads them deeper.
Basch notes this in particular: while Bhujerban coloration is dark for the majority, a single different strain shows. The lighter Bhujerbans have skin that matches their hair, ambiguous shades of dusky sand. Such is the coloration that graces King Raminas' wife and half his numerous offspring. Basch is amused to see children coloured as is the Crown Prince, shrilling with joy as they chase a folded paper boat along the course of a street gutter.
It is the laughter that decides Basch. He slows and follows his nose. There are sweetcakes on display behind fine nets that avail nothing: wasps steal the sugar with a delicate grace.
Vossler faces the street as Basch applies an easy smile to transform mild suspicion into welcome. They sit in the shade of a coarse-woven awning. They are delivered pastries and chilled juice with a heavy alcoholic aftertaste. The girl that attends their table is the proprietor's daughter from the similarity of their features. Basch thanks her, smiling, and converses momentarily. From her he learns the Bhujerban words for corresponding levels of gratitude, and applies them.
Apart from the drink, Vossler thinks the effort of their walk wasted. They still sit in shade. They still sit in silence. Basch patiently shreds the frangipani blossoms that grace their table. The children make of their pieces of paper birds now, and fill the narrow street with clouds of white falling wings.
Vossler speaks suddenly. Solitude is unbearable when graced with the laughter of children. 'Why are we here?'
'Metaphysically, ser? Specifically? Rhetorically?' Basch scratches his jaw, contemplating. 'Generally?'
Vossler snorts. 'Specifically, you over-educated lumberjack's son.'
'He can talk,' Basch grins, his hair in his eyes, 'who spent his youthful sight on the reading of tactics instead of the latest of tabloids. I want to see somewhat of the rumoured skycity of Bhujerba.'
Vossler looks at Basch's sun-scarred cheeks, the restless shift of his fingers. 'If you're truly hunting rumour, sordid or otherwise, we are sited well within the wrong district.'
There is a challenge in Vossler's voice. Vossler accommodates all the shifting fickleness the world has to offer, Basch knows, but only when Vossler is the one that commands the offering. Random activity has never appealed to the man. 'Have you a better locale in mind?'
'Yes, if you think you can bear the sight of all that can be bared.' Vossler's smile is rare, fleeting. He sees the way Basch's eyes linger along the firm limbs of the youths and girls playing. It sparks in him an urge to confront. He stood watch for Basch's vigil; heard Basch's vows; held Basch's shoulders as the man blooded himself, not quite a surrendered maidenhead, to consecrate his offering to Dalmasca. 'Sir Knight.'
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Age is a place, not a time.
The mouth of temptation has sharp teeth. Our own teeth will open and close, and prove that all life is edible. We devour ourselves before we die.
.
'It is a matter of economy,' Basch argues over his clear spirit. 'Not a matter of submission. The last Marquis' choice was made so he could negotiate the terms rather than being forced to accept total surrender.'
The music is loud, the conversation louder. Vossler does not want to look at the woman who conforms to Basch's side.
'Sophistry,' Vossler says, 'men nor women are chattel, and no Marquis, King or Queen can make us so. The gods gave us our freedom at our birth; it is for such we fight, Basch, for freedom.'
'Our freedom? Freedom is merely a commodity that exists for trade. Did I not choose to surrender my freedoms for the sake of Dalmasca? Did you not do the same?' Basch threads his fingers through his hair to push it from his eyes. Vossler's own eyes are shadowed. The lighting in here is flattering enough to make the knife-scored wood look smooth. 'Our studies of history document this so clearly, Vossler. Bhujerba was wracked near weekly by riots prior to the legalisation of the flesh trade. Miners are most often male and foreigners for the hard quality of the work. With no family to grant purpose to their labour and no love or historical bond to grant belonging to the city, I cannot place the blame on those who sought the admitted familiarity of flesh for solace in the midst of such strangeness.'
'Thus you excuse the ravaging of half of Bhujerba?' Vossler asks. 'No one, male or female, is so surrendered to the base demands of their flesh to excuse such a thing. Thought holds command over the flesh. Base instinct and rule-by-force is an animalistic hierarchy. Thinking creatures possess the means to rise above all base motivation; it is an insult to gods-granted sentience to surrender to our fleshy wants.'
'Goodness.' The whore says it, does not slur it; the worst, Vossler thinks, is that the lilt of her accent sounds unconscionably like the Queen's. 'Knights are terribly fond of words, striking like such blades. Do you wish to duel while I watch, sers? Another drink to wet your wisdom with?'
A nod, but once, mirrored. Vossler thinks Basch moved a moment before he did. The whore pours for both of them.
'I do not excuse rape,' Basch says, 'you forget, Vossler, of what I witnessed in the darkness of Landis's destruction. From whence did you learn your code, for it's not that of the Order. Archades is a nation that considers as you seem to, not Dalmasca, to put thought higher than all matters of the flesh.'
'Yet what does rumour make of Archades but a city of dual and depraved layers - a pretence of true noble quest for thought floating on the density of sexual perversion?'
'And that is truth; therein you see my confusion at your argument. Regard that city as symbol and symptom both, if you will: both halves city deny the other exists in any true right. The outcome of such inward denial is in every move Archades makes: a summary rejection of any way of thought but their own. And that is why we fight.'
Vossler cannot take his eyes from where the whore traces the broad circumference of Basch's wrist. Blonde hair stirs under her fingertips. Tendons flicker. 'Theoretical argument as to the root of Archadian vice aside, how do you justify that a whore offers aught to the health of Bhujerba's economy?'
Basch laughs. 'When the decision lies between putting money behind men with blades or behind the legalisation of prostitution, the Marquis before this one did well to opt for the measure that minimised bloodshed. Is death truly worth the matter of a man - or woman's - sole pride?'
The whore speaks again. 'One's profession is never a matter for shame when it is performed with pride, to the best of one's capacity. And so my brothers and sisters will keep the peace in this city as our moral duty, even. There is always a choice, in Bhujerba. I choose this path as proudly as you have chosen yours.'
'A den of pirates and prostitutes,' Vossler rasps. 'Scum of the skies come to roll in their sty. How did we end to be drinking here, Basch?'
Under Vossler's shadowed gaze, Basch is suddenly aware of the whore's touch, the press of her flesh against his side. She reaches for the chilled pitcher. Her grasp slips for the condensation. He uses her stretch to shift aside. She, even with Vossler's eyes on her as she pours, follows, her buttocks sliding across the bench. Basch tastes his drink as spiced with mild rue.
Basch replies. 'You brought us here. I have never experienced this city before. I am glad you brought us here. Tomorrow we may die.'
Vossler warns. 'You sound most unlike a knight. What of your vows to Dalmasca?'
'Vows prohibit nothing of intelligent talk. Nor of speculation. Would you strike out my eyes that I cannot see the world?'
'Strength is in denial, that we prove ourselves better men for the ability to overcome the weakness of our flesh.'
The whore asks: 'Yet when your lives depend on the firmness of your flesh, how can you presume any want that comes from that is weakness?'
'Strength is in union,' Basch says, 'in the symbiosis of all parts that constitute a person. Can you be all you can with an arm bound behind your back?'
'With an arm bound behind my back, I will still be more than another would expect.'
The silence is a familiar one. Vossler drinks deeply and regards the burn of his throat as mild penitence for his continued presence. Basch surveys the dive intently, his eyes as fickle as the turbulent crowd. It gives him a perverse kind of pleasure to note the sky pirates in attendance. Those sons of the sky are men who stand as the inverse of everything a Knight of the Order represents, landless and without allegiance, chasing wealth on whim, arrogant in their shamelessness where a Knight bears his humility as pride. The women that serve behind the bar do so as birds, fluttering and fickle, bare breasts shining, nipples daubed with glitter and with elaborate feathered plumage about their waist.
Basch wonders how, why, Vossler had ever found his way here.
'Well,' says the whore, 'as pleasant as this is, I would ask: have you talked yourselves into bed yet? My rooms are but a pleasant night's stroll from here.'
Basch opens his mouth. The world hangs on a word.
'It's your hair,' Vossler says. He starts bitter for the strangeness of sensation in his stomach; but this is Basch, Basch. He grins by the time he finishes, unwillingly, so briefly, but Basch sees the shadow of that smile. 'I knew I should have cut off your hair. It's a spill of honey, and all the whores are flies.'
Basch's words twist in his mouth. 'Blame not my hair, ser, but rather your own face.' Vossler's brow lowers; Basch continues, 'how can I not be seen as the better one when I stand next to such a scowl?'
'Do all Dalmascans engage in such verbose foreplay?' The whore touches the pitcher's wet mouth to Vossler's glass.
'Yet I'm not from Dalmasca,' Basch says, amused, 'but most immediately.'
Vossler's agreement scathes his own tongue. 'That you are not.'
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Age is a place, not a time.
All that waits to welcome us is a grave; soil and stone will shove the softness from our faces. In our caskets we will be safe. Our hearts cannot be broken when they lie buried so deep.
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Vossler is full of fear. He fears dying without dignity, curled around the spill of his guts and screaming. He fears living ignobly, having fled a blade or run from the field. He fears his name being lost amidst the hundreds that must fall for Dalmasca's sake: if he gives his life for Dalmasca, he wants Her to know his name. He wants Her to weep for him, to mourn. It is the only benediction a knight can want; a grave, somewhere, and tears shed over that disturbed earth.
Vossler sets his blade against his fear every day and wins. Today he thinks he will lose. His fear closes his throat.
'If we get out of this one alive,' Basch gasps, 'we are taking that most-virtuous lady up on her offer if I must gag you with whiskey to get your permission. Even the most demanding of wives allows a married man his affairs. You should not die a virgin sacrifice for Dalmasca's sake.'
A weariness suited to a man thrice Vossler's age weighs limbs and will both. Basch takes three blows that are aimed for Vossler, and the hook of a spear sunders his shield on the third. Their mounts are dead. They cannot see over the crush of horned helm and cowardly Archadian spear, but the sight of their few men will not come and the Bhujerban contingent withdrew an age ago. They heard the horns; they saw the flares. A border dispute, no glorious death, but there is no such thing as a glorious death. Vossler knows they are going to die. It would be worthy enough a departure to see a smile on Basch's lips.
His agreement is short, loud, definite. Basch's bloody smile lingers until it turns to a grimace with effort. It occurs to Vossler that he knows Basch best through the spin of his blade, not his face so Landisi and foreign, not his words with such masked meanings. The steel moves in patterns that match the language of fans Vossler once learned, back in that foreign place of his past. When Basch's blade tilts, the tip down, this is when Vossler knows he must move; when Basch's blade flutters so swift, Vossler presses knows to turn his attack to the side. They fought on their first meeting those years ago, for Vossler thought Basch a thief; when Basch dropped his sword it could have meant many a thing, but in the language of fans it meant one thing only: We will be friends.
The fight turns them against each other. Vossler's spine finds Basch's. The Archadian cohort pulls back to breathe. There are so many of them.
Vossler tries. He does not want to die afraid. 'But I will have you know I am well aware of the pleasure that lies between a pair of legs.'
Basch spends his breath to laugh. 'A pair of legs can more than please, but with all the pleasure a pair of legs can bring, have they ever transported you?'
Vossler slaps away a too-tentative spear with his bracer. 'In the afterlife, all men are what they are. I am no virgin, and you are emphatically no poet.'
'I should prefer to see proof of both assertions on this earth, where matters of flesh and poetry have some weight.'
Basch spins his blade, as showy as a sky-pirate; his shoulder-blades move against Vossler's. It is a waste of effort, but the Archadian forces are inexperienced youths for all their numbers. The circle about them widens. The dirt is bloodied and churned. Basch and Vossler must step crossways to avoid the posthumous Archadians that threaten to foul their footing. They will fall soon, too. All men are equal when naked or dead.
Basch's blade lifts, level with his eyes, and tremulous. Vossler knows this one too, what it means when the fan rises to hide the gaze. I am sorry. Vossler turns his own blade in response, wrist flicked to the left, arm extended, but it strikes him that Basch does not know this language either. It is a nobleman's language, a way for a woman to reach him without the confusion of speech.
Wait for me, Vossler's sword says.
Basch shouts: 'Come now, fair Archadians, be not ashamed of the matter of our deaths! Strike at my companion foremost! The halls of the gods are hungry for Dalmascan virgins at this time of year!'
'You peasant's bastard,' Vossler says.
When the Archadians close, they are both laughing.
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Age is a place, not a time.
We sit in the darkness of these early days, and our shoulders slope to match the curve of the hills behind us. We eye each other, and the voices of others arch over us like heralds, like doom.
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They move towards death every day. Such is the lot of a soldier, and they are soldiers whatever the nobility of the title. Basch is a Knight of the Order, prays with the frequency of a priest and fights in ornate plate mail. In Landis he was a landlord's son, prayed frequently for his life and fought in green-stained leather. The battles are always the same regardless of the side on which they fight. Men die without knowledge of what they fight for. Basch fights for Dalmasca, and Raminas, willingly. Raminas offered him something Basch never had in Landis - knowledge. Basch knows why Landis fell now; Basch fights for the freedom to fight.
Basch is not old, but he is old enough. He took to the life of a blade at thirteen and lived a man's life. His garrulousness is a familiar lie, words spoken to fill Noah's brooding silences. For his efforts then he earned his twin's anger and later recriminations. Basch has learned to let Vossler's silences be. Perhaps age will ensured he is better at self-expression, that in few words he can say what used to require a day of monologue.
It is in silence that they ride. The Bhujerban rear guard won them their liberty and lives, almost too late. Basch falls into retrospection before they have shaken their pursuit. Vossler falls from his mount before Basch can catch him. Vossler's armour is a shell. Across the fore of the Bhujerban sergeant's mount, Vossler bleeds from invisible wounds within, and Basch watches the spill scatter in the dirt at their feet.
They arrive at the encampment. The healing is hard and as hurtful as the blow. Vossler holds his silence. Basch does not, and after he laughs at his noisemaking. He is not ashamed of the pain. In the aftermath they strip each other for the lack of Dalmascan attendants. They sit in soft sand to tend the edge of their blades. The Bhujerbans erect an irregular trapped boundary outside the palisade.
'Basch,' Vossler says. He is hesitant. He has a new scar, the pucker pink against his tan. The pain is a phantom, his body's resistance to the magick'd wholeness. Vossler has never asked another if they suffer the same pangs. He feels the spearhead as though it is still there; as though he had forced a stone into the wound to keep it wide open, and aching.
'Vossler,' Basch says.
No more is necessary. With his blade across his knees, and Vossler's point down into the sand, Basch is content. Their shared silences hold more accuracy than can be found in words.
The night is not dark along the coast. They kneel to offer their prayers across the pommels of their blades. The nightly breeze will carry the words to Dalmasca by dawn. Their meditation is undisturbed by the tense abandon of the Bhujerban soldiers. They join those soldiers for the nightly meal. Basch says his learned words of Bhujerban gratitude - just yesterday, he learned those words, just a day - and wins a round of smiles. Basch plays at dice and loses with charm. Basch is a son of flame; the Bhujerbans are men of sky and air. They gather about him to feed the brightness of his smile, fickle moths to that candle's bright flare.
Such a thing Vossler has witnessed even amongst the Dalmascan troops. The young ones will never open to him as they open to Basch. Vossler is a son of earth: the men trust him for the fact of his existence. Such a trust requires faith, born of distance and Vossler's own diligence. They trust Basch because he is Basch.
They have spent too long fighting side by side, Basch and Vossler, sleeping side by side, eating side by side. When Basch finds no succour in the horizon's length he finds Vossler already rolled in blankets. When Vossler rises to seek relief for his bladder, he finds Basch already there.
Basch finds himself strangely shy. He hastens to completion, but is struck by the sight of Vossler's bare shoulders against the night sky. He moves but two steps away. Basch waits.
'I am afraid,' Vossler says, without turning.
'We all have our fears.'
Vossler never asks, never explains: he always states. 'I fear worthlessness. Of falling, unknown and unmourned. I give my life for Dalmasca, willingly, but willingness has never approximated worth.'
'As Knights we are married to the land, husbands to Dalmasca's need. Yet we are men for such a role, and neither of our mothers formed us for perfection. Fear does not equate worthlessness.'
Basch strives to comfort without seeming comforting, yet Vossler cannot hate him for his efforts. The Knights of the Order must move, bound with a single unified loyalty. Dalmasca cannot afford for them to be men. They cannot be fallible. Dalmasca must command all of their loyalty. They cannot marry or love any but for Her, love, lord, wife and desire in one. Vossler knows this. His value is not as an individual, but as another sword, nameless against the many that have fallen, that will fall. Vossler knows this. In his vows Vossler sees the absence, the negative values: thou shalt not, thou canst not. Basch has ever and always seen the affirmatives: thou shalt be worthy. Vossler knows what makes a Knight, the words and wisdom; Basch does not know. Basch is.
'A vow stands between us, Basch, when no Knight can give his vow to another.'
'It was a matter of jest, spoken to spite fear.'
'I am not a man who jests, and fear should never sway a heart's words. I have given my vow.'
Basch hesitates. His concern is not for the act, nor his vow of celibacy. He regards the application of both vow and penance as his sole responsibility. He has never seen that his flesh carries or represents his will in any way but in the direction he lends his sword. His fear is for Vossler. Vossler is a man of his word, to break for a miscast syllable.
'You twist your own words to cause yourself further suffering, Vossler, until it must seem to even I that your suffering is but a natural state, and you to never live without it.' Basch hesitates, and says, too bitter, too concerned: 'I want to see your smile yet I fight this struggle in vain, as though I sought to prevent a fish from getting wet.'
'You are bound by the same vows as I,' Vossler says. 'However lightly it seems such a thing falls on you. The compassion of the oppressed for the likewise oppressed is requisite.'
'I am offended.' Basch is not, but he tests the words to see them stiffen Vossler's spine. 'As though I am fated to sympathise for that we draw similar swords? Will you never think yourself worthy of another's regard?'
Vossler could not respond. Guilty, he was, and would suffer that guilt worse, but he took such comfort from loyalties that did not discriminate.
'In Bhujerba, Basch.'
'In Bhujerba, then.' Basch must add: 'If we can even find her again.'
They return to their blankets to find sleep has long since departed. The silence holds only itself.
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Age is a place, not a time.
The night is alive with a sleeping mind's enquiry, anxious for a place visited only in our dreams. Travel into the future is a skill learned in lieu of retreat. Yet at this hour we must retreat, back into our holes, to eat soil, to thirst, to lie, eyeless.
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The whore's house is not a setting that engenders serenity. It is not sordid or otherwise evocative of her profession; Vossler's disturbance is for the inverse. The house is warm and clearly a home. Flowers grace every windowsill. A small blonde dog regards them suspiciously from his cushion in the sun. Basch is blithe and amused. The whore - the woman is pleased for his humor, and laughs with a free sound that by sunset's brazen bronze is stripped of the night's suggestiveness. Vossler near expects her to set out milk and biscuits and bid them eat.
They are both big men. Their shoulders make the woman small, fragile, especially once she divests her garb and her gaud. Basch runs his fingers through her hair, enraptured by the inconsistent color. A brown strand sits alongside a blonde, that the whole cannot be named a single color but in comparison to another. It is the same Bhujerban blend as Raminas' Queen. Vossler wishes he had not thought such a thing. The whore's bed is big enough to hold them all and the room feels too small when they stand, and so they lie, side by side. She regards them, assessing. A fan spins overhead and stirs the length of Basch's hair to life.
Vossler she reaches for, first, and the insult is when she explains why: for the easier span of his size. That would kill what desire lies here but for that Basch puts his lips on her jaw, her ear, and Basch smiles; Vossler takes her easily. The action of thrust is a base one, a rhythm too easy to fall into for the accommodation of her flesh. Her nipples are tiny, her breasts scant to fill Vossler's palm. He finds he has become too used to male flesh surrounding him. The softness of her stomach is strange; the flesh of her thighs feels like surrender. Basch is intent on the woman. Vossler starts when Basch's hand slides over his; they are both holding her breast. Basch's free hand moves on himself, long and slow. Vossler cannot look away. Basch's hair is hardly darker between his legs, and not thick; a fuzz of gold instead of a thatch.
Vossler's thrust falters. He rolls away from the woman's wetness before he is betrayed. Basch slides atop her without preamble, with only a smile as he passes. The woman gasps when Basch thrusts, noisemaking as she did not for Vossler. Basch's hair whips with his motion. Vossler presses his fingertips to the whore's lips and wonders what this kind of agony tastes like. Basch lifts her ankles to his shoulders and watches himself as he enters her, so intent, so focused.
The flex of Basch's muscle is enough familiarity that Vossler can find his own hardness again; familiar, yet different in small ways. Tiny muscles at the narrowness of Basch's waist tense and release in a way Vossler has not seen. Basch's buttocks are tight and high, his focus unbreakable. His rhythm is entirely irregular. This is the skill of a swordfight, here, to assess and respond with a different strike as necessary. Vossler watches, and can only think such skill looks well on Basch. The woman is moaning.
When Vossler looks up, Basch's eyes are on him. Vossler cannot look away. There is hunger is that gaze, and Vossler cannot tell whose. Sons of earth and sons of flame do not abide together. Vossler cannot offer Basch the fuel he needs; Basch cannot warm the deep heart of the earth. Yet they are both but sons of Dalmasca whatever the matter of their imperfect births. They share their loyalty. Vossler puts his hand where Basch enters the woman. He feels for the hardness, not the wet.
Basch whispers something incomprehensible, do you want. Vossler nods, once, more than once. Then Basch is atop him, and Basch's lips are on his jaw, and Basch's rough fingers are seeking.
'I am afraid.'
'This is not a matter for shame, or even punishment.' Basch tries to see in Vossler's eyes something other than blackness. 'It is known a man carries his courage in his cock's undying flame. Does it not shrink when his spirit shrinks and swell with his heated courage? Is this not standing clear of your stomach as pure witness of the extent of your courage?'
There is a flicker of something Hume again, something young. 'Basch, you're a peasant.'
Basch laughs. He threads the hair out of his eyes and back behind his ears. 'On the backs of peasants are empires built. Give me your fear, and I shall stoke your courage.'
'Also, a dirty-minded peasant.'
'Shall I not be whatever you need me to be?'
'One constant in a world full of variables,' Vossler agrees, his breath very fast, 'your accommodating nature.'
Basch studies that sentence for the usual hidden insult, but finds only clear regard. He presses his lips to the hard line of Vossler's. He feels as though he worships at the statue of an unresponsive god, but longing can make of any object a god, of even the meanest bed an altar. The fan overhead does not offer enough airflow. Basch scarcely hears it when their hostess departs with a soft word, the click of a door. Vossler's body is so tense beneath him, as though the general tension of the past months of battle transmuted into this hard desire. Vossler arches when Basch slides his hands between his thighs, his breath and body unified in response. Again, that strange sensation of veneration: Basch has always respected Vossler's will even when it has not always aligned with his own. Basch is honored that he is the one that finds where the links in this great chain meet.
Vossler finds sweetness in the line of Basch's shoulders, a strange contrast for that evident strength. He licks Basch's forearm and tastes the salt. They are kissing, and Vossler thinks that act is strange between them. Any fight will demand flesh on flesh, and the tending of wounds in the aftermath. Their touch is expected. His lips on Basch's: the kiss is the lie here. Vossler does not want to break away, and Basch will kiss him for as long as forever stands against the shift of the sky.
Basch lifts Vossler's leg and rubs his cheek along Vossler's shin, bone against bone, light hair against dark. His fingers circle through the hair of Vossler's belly. His thumb strokes the line that runs from the head of Vossler's cock to the underside of his balls. He circles smaller then, to find puckered flesh, pressing deeper until he finds true depth. There is a burn for the one; it is nothing compared to the feel of two of Basch's fingers. Vossler does not sound. Such a small penitence he can bear.
When Basch rotates his wrist, it drives everything from Vossler's mind but the consciousness of that pressure and pleasure both sharp and shocking, like a blow. 'Oh gods,' Vossler whispers, and groans as he does not when struck, 'oh Basch.'
Basch hesitates. Something prickles, an unease stirring the hair at Basch's nape, chilling the sweat along his spine: this motion, this action, has the sudden feeling of probing a deep wound. His erection starts to subside. Vossler is too open to him when Vossler is never open. 'You cannot stop,' Vossler whispers, his eyes dark and desperate, 'Basch.'
Basch regards where his fingers meet Vossler's flesh. Vossler lifts his neck to stare likewise, one hand cupped behind his own stretched thigh. He is trembling.
Withdrawal has Vossler sigh, but Basch is only searching. He finds what he is looking for in the drawer to the side of the bed. Oiled, he delves again, all Vossler's resistance surrendered now. Vossler closes his eyes. The feel of him, hot and encompassing, stirs Basch's surety to firmness again. The sight of the fevered heartbeat fluttering at Vossler's neck drives all thought from Basch's mind, all hesitance with it. When he penetrates it is so slowly, and he wants to whisper, words, something to make this what it is not; he is speechless.
Vossler is not. He strains when he speaks. 'This is our only embrace.'
The words are almost that of their first vows, not spoken to each other. Basch remembers his vigil, that cold Dalmascan dirt flanking him when he had never thought to lay his body to rest but in Landisi soil. The hunger of his fast was a familiar, hated foe; thirst still the worst of enemies that the walls of his grave crawled with hallucination. The sky overhead was but a bare sliver, so dark and distant that Basch fought to still the fear that would have had him cry out; he was dead, this was a true grave, and all his existence but a daydream. This is our last embrace, Vossler's voice had come from above, hollow, not so distant, a solid, assured sanity. From Her comes life, and for Her we live, to return to Her at the last. Our last embrace lies in the arms of our Lady Dalmasca. It was for knowledge they buried him alive, that Basch could know to what cool earth all armies return, in absolute silence; only the hurt gaze of the moon a true witness. The difference was that he rose again where all those dead could not; he was naked, shrugging off the sand that the cold air could move on his skin. Under his feet blades of grass were wet with dew, and before him Vossler's eyes were endless depths of black as he held out the blade; all blood spilled in moonlight is black.
Vossler bleeds. His stomach aches with an unknown feeling, of an uncertain nostalgia or that sense of wrongdoing without true understanding. Basch almost pulls away, but Vossler reaches and draws Basch into him again, as close as the stretch of his own thigh will bear. He surrenders all thought when he surrenders his sanctity. Basch begins again, slowly. His pace is firm with an inconsistency that does not let Vossler slide into a complacent burn. Every motion sparks Vossler to fervor, but Basch is a son of flame. His touch will always burn. Vossler reaches for the line of Basch's waist and cannot stop there. He has never held Basch like this, with softness as intent. Basch stops, starts, and stops again, and he shudders.
Basch feels the skin all over his body tighten at Vossler's touch. Too soon, he must stop against the draw, so suddenly. He holds with a return grip on Vossler's thick wrist for surety.
When Basch moves again Vossler cries out for the spark of sure pleasure that rips across the ache.
Vossler takes his lust into his own hand to find a way to will against this ever ending. His own touch is familiar against the strangeness of the rest. That familiarity grounds him; he can hold. His fingers are tight, constricting; he will hold. He will hold all night, for all night is all he has of this. Sensation stretches beyond the span of the concept. Not yet, Vossler wants to say, not ever, but his mind marries the words, never, Basch, never. This is not pain. This is not pleasure. This is, and everything.
Basch stops with cruel suddenness. His muscles are rigid with the effort of shutting off. His arms are shaking. The escape is but a single spurt, clamped back by want instead of denial. Vossler's eyes are wide. He feels it. Basch waits, his heart striving to break in his chest. When his breath is sure and his control firm, he begins again. Vossler is wrecked with this, shivering, his lips broken from biting. Vossler's throat works as he swallows, and the sound is dry. Basch feels his own thirst as but a distant want; the heat here is immediate and demanding. He stops, waits, begins again. Again. Again. Vossler's knuckles are white with the force of control.
'I hurt', Vossler tries, at last. In answer Basch's hand wraps around his own.
'Yes,' Basch says, husky with effort. 'Let go. I have you.'
This had taken an eternity away from them. The ending is anguished. Basch's head goes back and his face is changed. Two strokes loose Vossler, Basch's arching release undoes him all the way, Basch's hand breaks him; he lets it happen.
Basch's head drops to Vossler's shoulder, the trail of sweat-dark hair across Vossler's chest. There is resignation, the pain of withdrawal, Vossler's voice surrendered at that last, and a world full of exhaustion.
.
Age is a place, not a time.
When we return to a place where once we were, it is never as amazing as we once thought it was. A bone inside you whispers, maybe tonight, maybe tonight; but he cannot hear.
.
There is a loyalty that lies between soldiers; that true service offered to the ones that fight side by side, to watch each other's back, to put a weapon in each other's hand when it is needed most sorely.
For days Vossler thinks of this, thinks what passed can be explained as this, but when they return to the fight Basch's sword is silent. There is no secret language there. Vossler cannot read the desperation or the devotion. Basch fights, mechanical and competent. Vossler feels the lesser for the loss of his second set of hands.
Dalmasca calls. For the first time in any of his sojourns, Vossler does not want to return to Rabanastre. This could have only happened in Bhujerba, and only happened now, arrogance as fuel and the fight as the tinder, and with oil, so much oil.
He does not know what Basch wants to hear. Basch looks at Vossler with unreadable eyes and a half-smile, flickering like a candle's flame. Days yet, and they grow slovenly for Vossler's lack of discipline, their cells heavy with sweat's stink and the scatter of smallclothes. Vossler still summons the desire to shave, but Basch does not; Vossler cannot admit he cares enough to call the man to task. Basch has ever been one for minimal efficiencies; he will always find a quicker way to do a task, if left alone, sometimes to determine that the quickest way to complete a task is to declare the necessity of commencement void.
Their armour and swords are always tended, always maintained. Their armor does not creak more than usual as they keep pace to the aerodrome. It is dawn, and the shadows are long, speculative fingers stretching the length of the street. Women in long veils wind through the streets, sweeping steps, humming songs that echo between the strokes of their brooms. Vossler does not notice; Basch stares at that poetry in motion, that daily evidence of continuity, and aches that they must leave this place so soon. Vossler thinks something similar: will they die today, or tomorrow; did they die yesterday, and the whole span of time since then but ghostly dreaming?
'Vossler, I need to ask-'
Vossler stops, abrupt, and spins to confront. Basch does not step away from him. 'My heart cannot break between two loyalties. Do not speak of what -- of that.'
Basch looks down, up; meets Vossler's eyes, and whatever ice grew so between them shatters. Basch grins, direly amused. 'Before you break something, I wanted to ask what you thought if I were to grow a beard. Perhaps I can admit it is not usual amongst those of our order, but consider the relative efficiencies: shaving takes substantial time from my morning schedule, on the field especially.' Basch's expression can never be bland, not with the tight muscle drawing his eyes up in amusement, the smile hiding in the shadows about his lips. He reaches to rub the gleam of gold along his jaw. 'It would, at the least, match my hair?'
Something inside Vossler releases its black-clawed grasp.
'I surrender, Landis.' Vossler tastes his own mocking; sweet. 'I can dictate your behaviour no more. And how is this: should you be able to stand the torment of a beard for longer than a week in Dalmasca's heat, I'll grow one to match.'
Basch shakes his head, grinning. 'If you insist on vowing to me, I will continue to hold you at your word.'
'Yes,' Vossler says.
They fight that day, the last dregs of Archadian probes send running, broken. They return to Bhujerba and seek their solitude. They will return to Dalmasca tomorrow, leaving with the dawn. As the sun sets, they kneel shoulder to shoulder to offer their prayers for Dalmasca's surety. They gift the breeze with droplets of Dalmascan wine mixed with oil; Basch considers the remnant wine and rues the waste. They sing their particular hymn, of the strike of swords and sweat's scatter onto the training court's dust. Their armour is tended, repaired, oiled, tested and set on stands, ready for their early morning departure. They meditate in but their smallclothes, slow breaths measured in unison until the world narrows to hold only the sound of each other's life.
When they wrestle it is without even smallclothes, nudity rendered by silent agreement. The reels of their breath unwind; this is the sound of the past, the frantic pace of the very near future, hissing and strained, caught in the straight lines of each other's lips. Vossler has Basch; then he does not. Basch has Vossler, loses him so swiftly, and has him again. Vossler cannot catch Basch again no matter how he strains; he threads his fingers through Basch's hair and pins him to the floor with a knee and a fist, and laughs, and tells him: 'And you want to grow it. I told you, it needs cutting.'
'Take anything, ' Basch pants, and grins; for all his writhing he cannot rise. 'Take whatever you want from me, Vossler, anything but my hair.'
'I cannot take; I am no sky-born thief.'
'Then I shall offer instead. Not much, for I am but a poor landless knight, but as much as any man can offer - time, pain, love, hate, age, war, death, laughter, life--'
'Your life is Dalmasca's.' Vossler's fingers unclench. Basch kneels at his side. 'As is mine.'
'The rest, Vossler. You can have the rest.'
.
Age is a place, not a time; time and places are all as dust. We hear the muffled future scream, together. You raise your hand to brush the blood away.