Final Fantasy XII (Ashe/Basch)
Jul. 5th, 2007 01:12 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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kinkfestTitle: Lines
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
puella_nerdii
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Pairing: Ashe/Basch
Rating: R
Wordcount: 1,502
Warnings: Spoilers through Archades.
Prompt: Sex up against the door - the scars on his back flexing, hundreds of them, a rock face molding to her hands
Archades sets Balthier’s teeth on edge, but his are not the only nerves frayed by the constant hiss of whispers coursing through the streets of the city. Ashe imagines piercing eyes and wagging tongues accompanying her every move.
“I’ve business of my own to attend to.” Balthier brushes his shirtsleeves with twitching fingers. “Vaan and Penelo should cause little enough comment unless the boy gets another of his bright ideas, and Fran knows how to handle herself in even the worst sort of city.”
“What of Captain Basch and myself?” Ashe asks, though she can guess the answer.
“That is the problem, isn’t it?” he muses. “News of your arrival would travel faster than tongues could carry it. A foreign princess returned from the dead and her traitorous captain—no, my presence will cause quite enough comment as it is.”
She feels her lips thin. “I am accustomed to hiding.” Accustomed, yes, though she cannot say that it sits well with her. Beside her, Basch nods slightly, scanning the busy thoroughfare below them. Ashe’s gaze mirrors his, but she cannot decipher the city’s patterns. Is it unusual for three women in full skirts to walk in concert down the widest part of the street? Do Archadian children often play so solemnly, staring at hapless mummers with carefully blank eyes? She does not know; she knows enough of Archadia only to know that her—she hates the word ignorance, but that is what it is—hobbles her here.
“Then you and the captain can do it for just a bit longer,” Balthier says.
“It has been two years.” She sweeps her hand over the crowd. “Who among them would know me?”
“You would be surprised,” Balthier says.
Basch nods solemnly, to her chagrin. “Should Vayne’s agents elect to scour the city for us, I would make their task as difficult as possible. And it is likely that they, at least, know our faces well.”
She taps her fingers against the rail. “Very well. Where are we to wait for you?”
“An acquaintance of mine runs a magickery. With the right method of persuasion, she’ll put you up.”
“I need not know about the nature of such persuasion.”
“And we will be safe there, or safer than we would be otherwise?” Basch asks.
“I should imagine so. If not…well, I imagine I’ll receive word of what results should you be discovered.” A sardonic smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. Ashe is less amused.
“We will be discreet,” Basch promises.
They rap thrice on the door facing the alley and are hastily shown inside by a pair of moogles. The back room is shrouded in the sort of dusty light she associates with libraries, but empty potion bottles, drops of violet liquid clinging to their necks, line the walls instead of books. Ashe brushes the dust from the top of a crate that apparently once contained holy magicite and twists her hands in her lap. There is no clock in the storeroom; she waits for the light to change to mark the passage of time, but its faded quality alters little.
Ashe frowns? Did the room just grow lighter? She sees green lights play on the wall…
Basch sits opposite her, the scroll of magicks in his lap growing brighter as his lips form phrases that set the air humming and make the hairs at the back of her neck stand at attention. Thin tendrils of green light pulse beneath his fingertips and travel under his skin up through his arms until the glow has suffused the pathways of his body. His eyebrows are furrowed and his hands tight, but still he is—in the magick’s radiance, he is not the Basch she knows. Her fingers ache to trace the throbbing trails now lining his face, erasing the mundane lines from it and creating them anew as hallmarks of power.
“What magick is that?” Ashe whispers.
Basch looks up, and the light fades. “A protective. It is similar to the Reflect enchantment, but affects a group rather than just one.”
“I did not know you were licensed to use it,” she admits.
He nods. “I’ve no skill with black magicks, but protectives such as this come more easily.”
“Nor did I know that.” She studies him again. The light has largely simmered away now, but traces of it flash under his skin still. Slowly, as though her hand moves through dense Mist, Ashe brings it to rest on his cheek, feels his jaw twitch as she trails it down the side of his face. He has been at her side for so long; why, then, does he seem strange to her, new? How much have two years changed them?
The time has done enough, it seems.
She needs to stretch her arm further up to trace the scar striped across his forehead. He flinches back as she brushes the tip of her thumb to it, nearly backing himself into the door to the storeroom.
“I meant no offense,” she says.
“I know you did not.” The harshness fades from his breath slowly. “Forgive me.”
“Yes.” She grabs the red leather of his collar, pulls it to her, and swings him around so their positions are reversed, with the metal of the door firm and cool against her back. “I do.”
Her hand continues its journey down and halts at the buckles across his chest. “My lady…” he whispers.
“Will you let me see?” she asks, deftly working the leather straps free. “I would know you, Basch.”
“I would not deny you—” he promises her, his voice ragged.
She stops his words with a fast kiss, her lips hard and bruising and her teeth against his tongue, and slides his vest over his broad shoulders. “If you would not deny me, then aid me with these buckles.”
His hands are surer than hers but less swift, as though he hesitates. She growls deep in the back of her throat and slides the belt around his waist free. It falls to the faded floor of the storeroom with the softest of sounds, even softer than the puffy breaths issuing from Basch’s lips. Removing his white undershirt is easy enough after that, though she pauses when her hands find a thick ridge beneath his ribs, knotted and cruel.
“An old wound,” he says softly, his breath catching. “Very old.”
Her kiss this time is slower—Ashe takes the time to circle her tongue around the small cuts lining the walls of his mouth, the raised welt at the base of his lip. It is good that she cannot see Basch’s back, she reflects as her hands encircle it, for from its feel, she could spend hours transfixed, wondering at the story told by each stripe, each gash, each aberration and imperfection. They are thick and ropy, his scars; not the fine ones she has received from her years with the resistance and her training with a blade, but markings of a far more deliberate nature. Would he tell her, if she asked? He might. It is one reason why she fears to.
She guides his callused hand to the belt holding her skort in place. He stills. “I want this,” she urges him.
“I would not wish to see you hurt.” His voice is barely more than a whisper.
Ashe’s lips sear against the hollow of his throat. “I am hardly that delicate.”
“I—”
“We need no further words,” she whispers. A sharp tug, and his shorts join her skort piled on the floor at their ankles. His hands settle timorously at her hips; she covers them with her own and presses down hard until his fingers leave marks in her skin. Ashe wraps her legs around him and bears down until he pulses inside her, stinging and full. She digs in her nails and urges him to move against her, move, he will not break her even if he presses her further into the door…and then he understands, and covers the side of her neck in breathy kisses. Her collar flattens around her neck as he guides her around him, his breath hot against her skin and the scars on his back flexing, hundreds of them, a rock face molding to her hands. The door rubs catlike against her back as his curls brush her, thick and soft and oh, perfect.
“There,” she gasps, “ah, Basch—” And she rocks forward, away from the door and towards him as the sparks she glimpsed earlier descend on her once more, filling her veins with the hum of magick.
She remains there, clinging to his back and breathing hard. Thin specks of dust settle in Basch’s hair.
“You are different like this,” she murmurs.
He hesitates. “Does it displease you?”
“No.” A lazier smile creeps across her features then, and she kisses his neck, long and slow and languorous. “I find it captivating.”
Perhaps it is best if Vaan and Penelo tarry on their errand.
Author:
puella_nerdiiFandom: Final Fantasy XII
Pairing: Ashe/Basch
Rating: R
Wordcount: 1,502
Warnings: Spoilers through Archades.
Prompt: Sex up against the door - the scars on his back flexing, hundreds of them, a rock face molding to her hands
Archades sets Balthier’s teeth on edge, but his are not the only nerves frayed by the constant hiss of whispers coursing through the streets of the city. Ashe imagines piercing eyes and wagging tongues accompanying her every move.
“I’ve business of my own to attend to.” Balthier brushes his shirtsleeves with twitching fingers. “Vaan and Penelo should cause little enough comment unless the boy gets another of his bright ideas, and Fran knows how to handle herself in even the worst sort of city.”
“What of Captain Basch and myself?” Ashe asks, though she can guess the answer.
“That is the problem, isn’t it?” he muses. “News of your arrival would travel faster than tongues could carry it. A foreign princess returned from the dead and her traitorous captain—no, my presence will cause quite enough comment as it is.”
She feels her lips thin. “I am accustomed to hiding.” Accustomed, yes, though she cannot say that it sits well with her. Beside her, Basch nods slightly, scanning the busy thoroughfare below them. Ashe’s gaze mirrors his, but she cannot decipher the city’s patterns. Is it unusual for three women in full skirts to walk in concert down the widest part of the street? Do Archadian children often play so solemnly, staring at hapless mummers with carefully blank eyes? She does not know; she knows enough of Archadia only to know that her—she hates the word ignorance, but that is what it is—hobbles her here.
“Then you and the captain can do it for just a bit longer,” Balthier says.
“It has been two years.” She sweeps her hand over the crowd. “Who among them would know me?”
“You would be surprised,” Balthier says.
Basch nods solemnly, to her chagrin. “Should Vayne’s agents elect to scour the city for us, I would make their task as difficult as possible. And it is likely that they, at least, know our faces well.”
She taps her fingers against the rail. “Very well. Where are we to wait for you?”
“An acquaintance of mine runs a magickery. With the right method of persuasion, she’ll put you up.”
“I need not know about the nature of such persuasion.”
“And we will be safe there, or safer than we would be otherwise?” Basch asks.
“I should imagine so. If not…well, I imagine I’ll receive word of what results should you be discovered.” A sardonic smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. Ashe is less amused.
“We will be discreet,” Basch promises.
They rap thrice on the door facing the alley and are hastily shown inside by a pair of moogles. The back room is shrouded in the sort of dusty light she associates with libraries, but empty potion bottles, drops of violet liquid clinging to their necks, line the walls instead of books. Ashe brushes the dust from the top of a crate that apparently once contained holy magicite and twists her hands in her lap. There is no clock in the storeroom; she waits for the light to change to mark the passage of time, but its faded quality alters little.
Ashe frowns? Did the room just grow lighter? She sees green lights play on the wall…
Basch sits opposite her, the scroll of magicks in his lap growing brighter as his lips form phrases that set the air humming and make the hairs at the back of her neck stand at attention. Thin tendrils of green light pulse beneath his fingertips and travel under his skin up through his arms until the glow has suffused the pathways of his body. His eyebrows are furrowed and his hands tight, but still he is—in the magick’s radiance, he is not the Basch she knows. Her fingers ache to trace the throbbing trails now lining his face, erasing the mundane lines from it and creating them anew as hallmarks of power.
“What magick is that?” Ashe whispers.
Basch looks up, and the light fades. “A protective. It is similar to the Reflect enchantment, but affects a group rather than just one.”
“I did not know you were licensed to use it,” she admits.
He nods. “I’ve no skill with black magicks, but protectives such as this come more easily.”
“Nor did I know that.” She studies him again. The light has largely simmered away now, but traces of it flash under his skin still. Slowly, as though her hand moves through dense Mist, Ashe brings it to rest on his cheek, feels his jaw twitch as she trails it down the side of his face. He has been at her side for so long; why, then, does he seem strange to her, new? How much have two years changed them?
The time has done enough, it seems.
She needs to stretch her arm further up to trace the scar striped across his forehead. He flinches back as she brushes the tip of her thumb to it, nearly backing himself into the door to the storeroom.
“I meant no offense,” she says.
“I know you did not.” The harshness fades from his breath slowly. “Forgive me.”
“Yes.” She grabs the red leather of his collar, pulls it to her, and swings him around so their positions are reversed, with the metal of the door firm and cool against her back. “I do.”
Her hand continues its journey down and halts at the buckles across his chest. “My lady…” he whispers.
“Will you let me see?” she asks, deftly working the leather straps free. “I would know you, Basch.”
“I would not deny you—” he promises her, his voice ragged.
She stops his words with a fast kiss, her lips hard and bruising and her teeth against his tongue, and slides his vest over his broad shoulders. “If you would not deny me, then aid me with these buckles.”
His hands are surer than hers but less swift, as though he hesitates. She growls deep in the back of her throat and slides the belt around his waist free. It falls to the faded floor of the storeroom with the softest of sounds, even softer than the puffy breaths issuing from Basch’s lips. Removing his white undershirt is easy enough after that, though she pauses when her hands find a thick ridge beneath his ribs, knotted and cruel.
“An old wound,” he says softly, his breath catching. “Very old.”
Her kiss this time is slower—Ashe takes the time to circle her tongue around the small cuts lining the walls of his mouth, the raised welt at the base of his lip. It is good that she cannot see Basch’s back, she reflects as her hands encircle it, for from its feel, she could spend hours transfixed, wondering at the story told by each stripe, each gash, each aberration and imperfection. They are thick and ropy, his scars; not the fine ones she has received from her years with the resistance and her training with a blade, but markings of a far more deliberate nature. Would he tell her, if she asked? He might. It is one reason why she fears to.
She guides his callused hand to the belt holding her skort in place. He stills. “I want this,” she urges him.
“I would not wish to see you hurt.” His voice is barely more than a whisper.
Ashe’s lips sear against the hollow of his throat. “I am hardly that delicate.”
“I—”
“We need no further words,” she whispers. A sharp tug, and his shorts join her skort piled on the floor at their ankles. His hands settle timorously at her hips; she covers them with her own and presses down hard until his fingers leave marks in her skin. Ashe wraps her legs around him and bears down until he pulses inside her, stinging and full. She digs in her nails and urges him to move against her, move, he will not break her even if he presses her further into the door…and then he understands, and covers the side of her neck in breathy kisses. Her collar flattens around her neck as he guides her around him, his breath hot against her skin and the scars on his back flexing, hundreds of them, a rock face molding to her hands. The door rubs catlike against her back as his curls brush her, thick and soft and oh, perfect.
“There,” she gasps, “ah, Basch—” And she rocks forward, away from the door and towards him as the sparks she glimpsed earlier descend on her once more, filling her veins with the hum of magick.
She remains there, clinging to his back and breathing hard. Thin specks of dust settle in Basch’s hair.
“You are different like this,” she murmurs.
He hesitates. “Does it displease you?”
“No.” A lazier smile creeps across her features then, and she kisses his neck, long and slow and languorous. “I find it captivating.”
Perhaps it is best if Vaan and Penelo tarry on their errand.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 05:37 am (UTC)TO EVERYTHING.
oh god
(...you knew it was my prompt, didn't you? How else could it rub me so many of the right ways?)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 05:54 am (UTC)Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed it. And hot damn was that one fun to write.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 06:44 am (UTC)I especially liked this line Ashe’s lips sear against the hollow of his throat. “I am hardly that delicate.”
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 06:52 am (UTC)The language here is really vivid. I could practically feel all the different scars Ashe kept finding. I loved her fascination with them; it...seems rather fitting for her, actually. I'm also, once again, thoroughly impressed by your ability to give a story atmosphere. With this one especially, it doesn't seem like you write more than the average author...but it sure does feel like it.
So, I liked this.
Then I read this:
And she rocks forward, away from the door and towards him as the sparks she glimpsed earlier descend on her once more, filling her veins with the hum of magick.
...and now I love this. *faints*
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 12:05 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed this one! Language is one of my favorite things to play with when I write -- which explains why I love FFXII so -- and I'm glad it's so vivid for you.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 07:57 am (UTC)Details, details! Archadia, the magicks, it feels as if I've stepped right into the game. Your use of imagery is just lovely.
*purrs*
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 12:06 pm (UTC)Details are fun. I indulge in them whenever I can, really.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 11:59 am (UTC)And, well, up against a wall. Unf.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 12:08 pm (UTC)Thank you! I sometimes feel like I underdevelop the setting when I write, so I'm glad it stuck with you this time around.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 01:45 pm (UTC)rich and vivid and lovely, so sensual, so immediate -- and I am impressed at how well you make the prompt line mesh with your own words, which is never as easy as it might be and doubly so when its language is so distinctive and demanding. ^^
prrrr.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 03:00 am (UTC)I'm glad the prompt line meshes well -- I was a bit worried about recreating the zomgorgeousness of the line itself. Such a smokingly hot image.
*purrs right along with you because, well, it's Basch and Ashe. How can I not?*
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 08:33 pm (UTC)Now I'm going to have pervtastic thoughts at work tonight.;D
no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 03:02 am (UTC)Pervtastic thoughts are the best kind, although they can lead to awkward moments where your boss wonders just why you're grinning. Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 10:54 pm (UTC)(I had been waiting for this one. eeee.)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 03:04 am (UTC)I mean, it's not like any of the magicks in FFXII can be used for Naughty Purposes. Especially not spells like Oil.
Thankyou!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 11:04 pm (UTC)*fans self*
This is absolutely gorgeous. Ashe's aggression, the protective magicks coming more easily to him, her fascination with his scars, and mmmm. Up against a wall. Oh, YES.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 03:07 am (UTC)(I had Basch master as many green magicks as I could give him. They just seemed so appropriate. *pets*)
Also, aggressive Ashe makes me (and Basch as well, it would seem) purr.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 03:09 am (UTC)Ooh, good point.
I have an irresistible attraction to meta when I write, I think -- I love thinking of all the ways game mechanics affect the characters out of battle.
Thanks for commenting!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 01:06 pm (UTC)"We need no more words". Lady knows exactly what she wants :)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-07 04:29 am (UTC)Ashe is very direct when she wants to be. Oh yes. Purr.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 05:31 pm (UTC)The atmosphere is perfect, and Ashe. Oh yes. *prrr*
no subject
Date: 2007-07-07 04:30 am (UTC)