sheffiesharpe (sheffiesharpe) wrote in kinkfest, @ 2007-09-03 15:09:00 |
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Current mood: | busy |
Entry tags: | a: sheffiesharpe, f: final fantasy xii, p: ffamran/gabranth, september 03 |
"What Else He's Done in Here," FFXII (Gabranth/Ffamran)
Title: What Else He's Done In Here
Author: sheffiesharpe
Fandom: FFXII
Pairing: Gabranth/Ffamran
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2850
Warnings: 16 is legal enough in Archadia.
Prompt: "A clever boy, but an untried one."
For the third night in a row, Gabranth returns to his room to find the window open. It troubled him the first night—he searched hours for whatever must have been missing, but found nothing. And it nagged—he slept poorly—and convinced himself he’d left it open, though he knew better. While he lay, open-eyed, there was something in the air, or at the edge of his pillowcase, that hadn’t been there before. But nothing was missing.
His window is open and he is sure he can see a depression at the edge of his blanket, as if someone had put his knee there, had leaned a moment, for there is another indent, perhaps a palm, and that slight scent is on the air again, more, on his pillow. And it is more familiar, something he knows, he is sure of it. Something from today. But he is tired, and no ill has come of this strangeness, and sleep comes quickly.
* * *
One of Zargabaath’s aides, one of the senior cadets, comes to leave him a set of maps, and he is always sure to look at this one when this one comes into his office. The Bunansa boy. He is too young, of course, only just come of age, but he is elfinly handsome, and Gabranth likes the way the boy looks at him when he is sure Gabranth doesn’t notice. He glances up, bids Ffamran enter with a nod, and turns his attention to the note he wants to send back to Zargabaath. Ffamran puts the maps on the side table, and Gabranth can feel his eyes on him. The hair on the back of his neck stands up, and there is warmth in the pit of his stomach that should not be there.
It seems longer than it should be before Ffamran says, “Will there be anything else, Judge Gabranth?” Gabranth tells himself he’s hallucinating that way the syllables of his title elongate.
“A message for his honor, if you can wait a moment.” His voice is even. Even if the boy were propositioning him, and surely he is not, he has played this game far longer, and he will not rise to the bait so easily.
“All day if necessary, sir.” That is no hallucination. Gabranth keeps his eyes on the slanting ink. He does not permit himself to look up, not once, though he wants to. When the lines are written, though, the page folded and sealed, he does not stand and give it to him as he knows he should. He rests his elbow on the desk and holds up the document. Waits. His eyes face the next set of tasks, the ones that will take him out of this office for the remainder of the day.
When Ffamran reaches for the note, Gabranth looks up, as though he’s just remembered something, and he lifts his arm at the last moment, so that their fingers jostle. Ffamran looks startled, only for a moment, but it is a crucial moment, and Gabranth holds the paper more firmly, so Ffamran has to pull it from his grasp. He’s looking at Gabranth, and that confident smirk is over his eyes again.
He turns toward the door, and Gabranth takes a deep breath. He should not—should not—and that smell—he looks up as Ffamran glances over his shoulder. He pauses in the doorway, and Gabranth thinks he cannot be right, but the longer Ffamran stands there, his chin up but his eyes wanting to dart, the more he’s sure he is.
* * *
That night, there is no sign of him, though Gabranth goes outside, looks up, tries to see the path he would have to take, whether the risk is enough that he has to forbid him outright. His room is only on the second floor, and there are enough grooves in the old stone that an agile climber could manage it easily. There is more to it than that—he’s manipulating the lock, too, but Ffamran is the son of Draklor and if he’s not simply picking the lock as a thief might, there are plenty of magnets and magicites a clever boy might use, as well. And he is clever. Gabranth thinks of how he startled when they’d touched, when Gabranth made it clear he was entering this game Ffamran initiated—so, a clever boy, but an untried one. Something twists hot and eager in his gut and he is ashamed to feel so, but not enough to cool the desire.
In the morning, he reminds himself not to seek Ffamran out. If the boy wants something, he’ll have to come to him, and he knows he’s mollifying his conscience with that, though he also knows he would do nothing against the boy’s wishes. He can’t quite help hoping, though, that he’s guessed at what it is Ffamran wants.
The day’s tasks envelop him soon enough, and he is caught in a tangle of supplies requests when there is someone at the door. He looks up, knows he does so suspiciously quick, but it is only the adjutant from Ghis’s office. He has orders—his regular leave-day is no longer so: this week, he is to accompany a transport, and so he is dismissed for the rest of this day as compensation. A few hours trade for a whole day, but there is no questioning it. He gathers up what paperwork can safely be completed by someone else, gives it to the adjutant, and closes his door. He is almost to his barracks when the disappointment hits—he’d wanted, at least, to see the boy, get a better sense of what he was playing at. If he was playing at all.
At first he thinks to practice with his blades. He is learning a two-sworded style, after Zecht, and his right hand still wishes for a shield, but there is something chill and fall-crisp in the air that makes him yawn, makes him want solitude. He opens the door and looks first to the window. It is still closed. He wonders if the boy has been here and decided instead to cover all of his tracks, for certainly he’d known he’d been leaving them.
Changing his clothes, hanging his uniform, he tests the air for that scent, and if the boy has been here, it’s not recently. There is only what seems to cling to his pillow, at one spot—as if he’d lay down, curled his skinny arm around the pillow and breathed, one bunched corner flush with the very spot he’d put his cologne. Before he can stop himself, Gabranth is stretching out on top of the blanket, though he turns his pillow so that corner is under his cheek, and he’s half-hard with picturing Ffamran here, like this. Wonders what else he’s done in here, if he’s lain on Gabranth’s bed and clutched his pillow like this, if his voice is all invitation but he doesn’t seem to know what he’d do if the invitation were accepted. After a long minute of arguing with himself, he pushes to hands and knees, presses his nose to the blanket itself, tests the dark woven fabric with his fingertips for the slight stiffness of dried spend. When he finds nothing, he does not know if he is more relieved or disappointed. He palms his trousers, shakes his head. He has to find something else to do. He is not so hard up for it that he should be reacting this way—if his foreignness holds him apart as a comrade, it may be that very thing that makes him sought-after as a bedmate; he has no shortage of offers. Why then, should this one—if it is an offer, indeed—entice him so?
He makes tea, chooses a book he’s been meaning to read, and looks at his room. He has no taste for reading in the hard-backed chair at his small desk, and as a judge, his room hasn’t enough space for more furniture. He has only his bed, then, and he sits gingerly, his back to the headboard, and reads.
He is not a hundred pages in when a slight shadow at the window makes him glance up. He can see movement but not detail at this slantwise angle, and he watches. He thinks he knows what it is, and the sash lifts in silence. It had creaked before—the boy actually improved the situation, and Gabranth is more intrigued still. He backs into the open window, and his feet find the edge of Gabranth’s desk so easily Gabranth suspects this has been happening for more than three days. That the signs he’s left are deliberate, that he’s meant to be caught, and Gabranth’s breath catches. He waits until Ffamran is fully inside, until his feet are steady on the floor to turn a page. The dry flutter of paper is like a window breaking. Ffamran jumps, whirls, his eyes wide and scared. He hadn’t meant, then, to be caught today.
“What are you doing here?” he says, all panic, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands—his fingers stutter at his sides, and the response is automatic—his back goes ramrod-straight, and he salutes. “Sir.”
Gabranth fights down the laughter. “What am I doing here, in my room?”
The boy’s face is white. But his chin stays up, and Gabranth likes that.
He closes his book—he’d like to find a bookmark, but that wastes motion, wastes this beautiful tension—puts it to the side slowly. When the book is completely flat on the table—silently—he says, “Care to explain what you’re doing here?”
“No.” He leans toward the window again, and Gabranth stands. Ffamran snaps back to attention.
“What do you want with me?” Gabranth knows he’s putting the question backwards, because what Ffamran wants is for Gabranth to want something with him. But if Ffamran wants anything, he’ll answer.
And the question makes him falter. It’s clear Ffamran has an answer, clearer still that he doesn’t want to say it. All the more reason he should. Gabranth will make this a little easier.
“Stand down,” he says, and he leans against the wall. “What have you been doing here?”
“Nothing.” He doesn’t finish it with “sir,” and that makes this easier. He doesn’t want to do this as a superior officer—don’t fuck up or down the ranks—and even if Ffamran’s not truly under his jurisdiction, it’s still less complicated if they can forget about rank. There’s enough difference between them. Ffamran’s fingers twitch, as if he’s counting something off in his mind, but he’s still trying to keep his face still, cool. It’s working less now, because he’s watching Gabranth, watching his hands and his hips and Gabranth’s eyes. His tongue flickers out over his lower lip, and the motion is so unconscious—Gabranth wants more, can’t help himself or the way his voice warms.
“I can smell you on my things.” He takes a step forward, and Ffamran doesn’t move back. His throat flexes, and Ffamran’s teeth show just slightly against his lower lip.
“Do you—” The words stumble, but he finds his voice, the one he’d used the day before, the slight curl on the end of the phrase. “Do you like it?” He matches Gabranth’s step forward, and he tilts his head to the side.
Gabranth tries to go slow, but his arm is around the boy’s waist and his lips on the sweet-smelling pulse point before he can catch himself. Ffamran leans into him, bares his neck farther, twines his arms around Gabranth’s neck and clings fast.
“I like it.” Gabranth shifts, and his thigh brushes Ffamran’s cock, the distended fabric of his black trousers. Ffamran shoves his hips against Gabranth’s leg, and Gabranth can see how hard he is trying not to rub against him, how he tries to keep his eyes slitted and seductive through one imperfect and halting roll against Gabranth’s hip. “Feels like you like it, too.”
“I—like—” His tongue sticks when Gabranth’s fingers find their way under his shirt, into the waistband of his trousers, and he stiffens against Gabranth, just a moment, before he goes on tiptoe to touch his lips to Gabranth’s jaw with as much open-mouthed enthusiasm as lovers in books display. He seems surprised by the faint rasp of stubble.
More untried, then, than Gabranth had first thought. He slides his hands down Ffamran’s arms, pulls him back a moment. “Have you done this before?”
“Yes.” And his chin lifts, the wiry arms tight under Gabranth’s fingers. Gabranth holds him there until he finishes. “Some of it.” His eyes drop, find the line of buttons on Gabranth’s shirt, seem to climb them back up. “I want to. With you.” He lifts his hand, strokes it down Gabranth’s ribs, lets it drift down until he skates over Gabranth’s cock. “And you want to.” He knows he’s right, Gabranth can see him pulling that in, using it to lever up his eyes and that teasing timbre in his throat. “You want to have me. That’s what I was doing here. Thinking about that. On your bed.” His cheeks are going pink but he’s not looking away this time. He’s leaning in again. One thing—one thing Gabranth needs to know.
“Why me?” It is not vanity that prompts him to ask.
The boy’s face is bright red now. “They say—they say you’re good. In the barracks. Katen said so—he was telling Donel, and Iyra said so, and she’s so beautiful she could have anyone. Levis liked you, I heard him say—” He stops, and Gabranth doesn’t know how to respond—his reputation precedes him, apparently—but Ffamran speaks again, his voice smaller. “It looks good, too, when you—” His mouth snaps shut again, and he looks at the floor.
“You watch me?” That’s disturbing, and it’s going straight to his groin.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Ffamran starts to pull away, and Gabranth doesn’t let him. If he wants to pull away because he doesn’t want to do this, that is fine, but Gabranth isn’t angry. He might be later, but for the next few hours, he’s pretty sure that thought is only going to make him hard. Ffamran glances up. “It was only once. I didn’t mean to.”
“I’m honored.” And in a perverse way, he is. More than just wanting Ffamran’s coltish beauty, that eagerness clinging to his neck. It’s heady, this sense of newness, and the weight of it, the responsibility, rests comfortably on his shoulders. If this is what Ffamran wants, he’ll make it good for him. “You’re certain?” He bends to mouth at Ffamran’s neck a moment—it’s no favor to do this, no hardship, not at all, and Ffamran is already reaching for him again. “You have only to tell me if anything is amiss, and I will stop.” He draws Ffamran’s chin up, looks him in the eye on this. “You will tell me?”
Ffamran nods, and he is acknowledging that, even though his pelvis slants hungry against Gabranth’s thigh. It would be best, perhaps, to bring him off now, to give him something that is certainly familiar first. Gabranth slides his shirt up and off, turns him and backs up until Gabranth can lean against the wall, pull Ffamran so that his pale, bare back is against his chest. He slips his hand into Ffamran’s trousers, and Ffamran’s hands cover his, tantalizingly deft on the buttons. He shoves the material aside, shoves it down, and Ffamran kicks away shoes and trousers so quickly Gabranth has to smile against the back of the boy’s neck. Oh, yes, he remembers that feeling, and he wraps his hand around Ffamran’s cock, strokes steadily. Ffamran’s fingers scrabble for purchase on Gabranth’s thighs, and his warm hand comes to rest on Gabranth’s wrist, holds tight and urges him faster.
The way he writhes against him is beautiful, honest in ways Gabranth knows the boy’s mouth is not, the way none of theirs are. It is not long before Ffamran tenses, before his fingers go tight, and Gabranth curls forward to follow the arch of his body, presses his lips to his shoulder. When he catches his breath and Gabranth wipes his hand on the edge of the blanket, Ffamran crawls up on the bed, on all fours, and his head hangs between his arms. Gabranth sits beside him, not behind him, and kisses him until Ffamran sits up, inches closer. He touches the cloth covering Gabranth’s chest with the tips of his fingers.
“I’m ready, if you want to—” He is talking himself into it, and he makes as if to turn around again. Gabranth holds him still, pulls him close, cups the back of Ffamran’s head in his hand even as he’s kissing him again.
“It’s better,” Gabranth says, nipping his ear and feeling the shiver run all the way through the boy, “if we start at the beginning.”