[identity profile] sister-coyote.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] kinkfest
Title: Healed Glyphs
Author: [livejournal.com profile] sister_coyote
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex. Spoilers
Word count: 2500
Summary: Each mark has a story.
Prompt: Final Fantasy XII, Drace/Gabranth: Scars - the stories that go with them.



It was not the first time they had lain together, or even the third, or the fifth, but it was the first time with the edge of both awkwardness and hunger gone, and Drace was glad of it. Stripped of armor and garments both, she stretched out on the soft linens of the bed, next Gabranth -- stretched equally bare, warm-skinned in the firelight. They would come together before the night was through, she knew it, but there was for now no sense of driving urgency -- and she was glad of that. Her hands mapped his skin, as his did hers, with a thoroughness unmarred by haste.

His rough fingertips caught on her skin as he dragged them around her ribs and up the underside of her breast. Her breath caught. His fingers lingered a moment, and she heard the low timbre of his voice as he said, "You've a scar here?"

"Oh, that one," she said. "That hasn't an interesting story at all."

His thumb traced the path from beneath her arm nearly to her heart. "Oh, doesn't it?"

"No. It was a blow from a warhammer -- my breastplate spared my ribs breaking, but the pressure drove the edge of the lower half into my skin." She arched when he cupped her breast in the palm of his hand. "We were putting down a riot in the low city."

"What about this one?" His hand trailed down over her stomach, to the thick mark running upward from her right hip to the bottom of the left side of her ribcage.

"Much more interesting." She rolled over onto her back, letting him stroke the line of the scar, and then span his hand over her belly. The heel of his hand brushed against the sensitive dip on the inside of her hipbone. "It was not in warfare. I had been in the army for perhaps seven years, at the time, and I had already acquired my nickname -- "

" -- 'Iron Maiden,'" Gabranth said, with some reverence. "And a good nickname it is."

" -- and the captain of another company was... skeptical of my ability to back it up, being as I was a woman on the battlefield. So he challenged me to a friendly duel -- the friendliness of the mousing cat, let me assure you -- and I accepted, for my own pride and for the pride of my battalion. So we fought before them all. He was not a bad warrior, but cocky at the beginning, and incautious, and I laid to him two good blows before he realized that he would need to be wary of me."

"More fool he," Gabranth said, stroking the inside of her hipbone and making her rock a little against him: still not desperate, but beginning to tremble with sensitivity.

"It went on some time, but with my immediate advantage, well, I was besting him, and more handily than I think he thought appropriate -- so he fought more vigorously, and thus less cautiously, and lost more ground. I think he could not bear to lose so to a woman, so he cut low with his knife, which was sharp enough to cut through a leather jerkin and a wool shirt and make that wound. Which was against the stipulations of the duel -- no cutting blows to the torso, or blows of any kind to the head, for the sake of safety -- and furthermore though we had agreed to fight to first blood, he still pressed on."

Gabranth chuckled, as if knowing where this was going, and assuredly he did; her sense of honor was well-known (and sometimes the target of humor -- some gentle, some not). He left off stroking the inner curve of her hipbone to squeeze her hip in his hand.

She continued. "I was bleeding badly but I did not think he had breached the wall of my gut, and so I pressed on. I could not finish quickly with a blow to the head, though at that point I wished to drive some sense through his skull by whatever means was most likely to succeed -- but I drove him back to the edges of the practice ring, and struck at his arm until he dropped the sword from his hand, and held it to him until he conceded. By that time..." She smiled a little, in memory, her hand tracing a slow circle across his own stomach. "By that time I was covered in blood from beneath my breasts to my feet, and my sword-arm and sword were spattered with blood, and I had the rage in me, though I knew enough to stay my hand when he conceded. I believe he was a little afraid of me, in the end, for keeping my feet, though it was only a flesh-wound and not truly dangerous."

"I would not like to face you thus," he said, "furious and bloody and with the light of honor in your eyes." He sounded a little awed, and she smiled to herself and turned over to face the firelight and its warmth. Gabranth's hand slid from her hip to land on the back of her knee. "This mark I know."

"The dogs," she said, sighed. "I had thought Redroot was a promising one, but in the end he did prove too wild. An irony, that I should spend more than fifteen years of my life in combat, and yet the only time I am nearly hamstrung it is by my own mastiff."

"Not a bad record." Gabranth stroked the top of her knee, her calf, tracing the ring of scars from the bite. "In Landis we had a saying, that in every cat there is some panther, and in every dog there is some wolf, and in every man there is some beast. Sometimes one simply has the misfortune of encountering a dog whose wolf rides too close to the surface to live comfortably with the rule of man." She was pleased that he could say 'Landis' with no more visible qualm than a little flicker of his eyelashes.

"Perhaps," she said. "Nonetheless."

"And any failing of Redroot is two and three times recompensed by your success with Blackthorn and Briar and the others." His fingers curled a little on the back of her knee, making her squirm and laugh.

"That tickles," Drace said, "and at any rate I believe it is my turn." She felt light, giddy. She put a hand on Gabranth's shoulder to tip him onto his back and straddled his hips. Her hand ran down from the corded muscles stretched over the curve of his shoulder-bone, to the dip between shoulder and collarbone, and down along his ribs to the heavy mass of scars -- scored and scored again -- across his side. "This."

"Mm?" He covered her hand with his own. "That -- was early in my time in the military." He licked his lips. "Do you remember the uprising on the northwestern border?"

"Remember?" She ran the flat of her palm over the raised marks, somehow at once textured and shiny-smooth. "I was leading a battalion near Tankhel. We were -- concerned, as it was shortly after -- "

"The executions, yes." He trailed his hand up the inside of her wrist to the curve of her elbow. She shivered. "Of course. I had forgotten you were on field duty then."

"Not an accident, I believe," she said, rueful. "I think Vayne did not want me near the capitol then, even though I was not yet Magister. At any rate," she continued, flexing her fingertips against the scars, "at any rate, you were telling me...?"

"So," he said, "the uprising. I was on a chocobo, and I'm sure you remember -- "

"Yes," she said, "they were very keen on hamstringing your mount from under you; I do remember. My battalion was mostly footsoldiers, but they killed my mount. A pity, too; she was a good bird."

"-- and so I went over the chocobo's head," he said, smiling a little in memory, "dropped my sword and wound up on my back, looking up at the ugliest man with a mace you have ever seen in your life." She rubbed her fingertips over the scar. "His first blow peeled my armor back -- worst luck -- and then I rolled, and he struck, and I rolled, and he struck. He hit me several times, but always glancing blows; enough to tear at the flesh, but not enough to crush my ribs or expose my innards. I tried again and again to gain my feet, and he tried again and again to crush me with his mace, and finally he stopped, his face so red he might have recently come from the steamhouse , and said, 'Damn you, stop moving!' as though I might oblige him and hold still to be pummeled to death. Which I did -- well, in a fashion. I held still when he said, but when he dropped the mace I moved, and he overbalanced and fell, and then I kicked the mace from his hands and got up enough to draw my knife and finish him."

Drace began to laugh, unable to help herself, trailing her fingers up from that wound and down his arm. "Neatly handled, my dear soldier."

He laughed himself. "Not one of my more glorious moments, I must say, rolling on my back in the mud with some pig-ugly man attempting to brain me with a club."

"Nonetheless. Victory is victory, and cleverness is no bad thing." She let her fingers wander down to his hand, which bore a faint, old red mark across the palm. "And this?"

He laughed again, freely, and said, "Oh, that. I seized a fire-poker without first checking its temperature."

She smiled, and held out her arm to show a faint scar of her own, on the inside of her forearm just past the wrist. "I leaned my arm against a cookpot without thinking." Gabranth smiled. Drace rolled over a little more, up onto him, half-sitting and half-reclining against his chest. Her hands on his skin, and his on hers, had slowly built the low fire within her, and yet she still was in no great hurry to end this savoring of body and history.

"And this one?" she asked, her hand splayed flat to a mark on his chest -- whatever cut that made it was not deep, but scarred beautifully, raised and white with a trace of shiny-smooth healed pink along the seam that must have been described by the blade. She moved a little on him, not quite ready to be done talking but nearly so, rubbing wet and soft against his thigh. The cut made an arc that was nearly artistry, curving down from below his collarbone to under his pectoral muscle in a single smooth sweep.

"Sparring with Zecht," he said, briefly, this time without proffered explanation. When her hand stopped at the edge of the scar, covering his heart, he covered her hand in turn with his own.

"Zecht was usually more careful, sparring with live steel," she said, the question on the tip of her tongue, her lips, but not quite ready --

"It was not unwanted," Gabranth said softly, looking at her with a silent question of his own, bright-gold in the slanting sunlight. "It was not unwelcome."

She could not speak, did not know quite which words were best to reassure him, to both calm and encourage him. She leaned forward, her fingertips still on the line of his scar, to kiss him.

His lips parted beneath hers, his mouth warm and strong and his hand sliding up the expanse of her back (with its many more scars; but there would be other nights, and other stories) to hold the nape of her neck, gently, in his hand. He broke the kiss to kiss her again, and then again, warm and lovely. She rocked against his thigh and he moaned a little. Her thumb traced the scar.

"You are not -- "

"No," she said. "No, I could not think ill of you. I am no stranger to pain. In battle or otherwise."

He pulled her to him and kissed her again, and she opened her thighs to straddle his hips, her knees to the bed, her hands on his chest, on the beautiful arch of a deliberate scar. "Then -- " he began, and interrupted himself with another kiss, hungry but not quite demanding, drawing her tongue into his mouth.

When they broke again for air she said, "We will discuss it. It needs discussion." He nodded, eyes bright. "But not now. Now I do not have patience for more discussion, I think."

He smiled, beautiful when he smiled, beautiful in the firelight turning him to gold. She reached between them to smooth back his foreskin the rest of the way (how strange that had been the first time; how quickly it had become easy, normal) and then press against him. He slid into her easily, and pressed up, and she rocked down onto him with a little breathy noise and leaned forward to kiss him again. When she tipped her head back, his mouth found her throat, her collarbone, her breast. She tangled her fingers in his short hair and held him there, rocking her hips, slow and pleased with the angle, the movements, the tempo. His mouth found her throat again, licked the pulse-point beneath her ear, and he murmured, "Drace," so soft it was almost a breath.

"Ahh, Gabranth," she said, and then tightened her thighs on his hips and rolled over, bringing him with her, until she was on her back -- beneath him but not submitting, tight around him, using the leverage of the bed to allow her to thrust up to meet him as he moved deep inside her. She wound her hands over his shoulders and raked his back with her nails, to see the look of startled pleasure on his face. He trembled. He trembled. So did she.

"You are beautiful," he said, "Drace, Drace, beautiful, and the scars make you more beautiful. I want to know where each of them is from."

"Yes," she said, "ah, yes. More -- I am strong enough to bear it."

"Of course," he said, and propped himself on his forearms to thrust into her, strong and deep, as she liked it, and she scored his back once more and closed her eyes, red firelight patterns on the inside of her eyelids. She did not come quickly, but like a storm building: gathering slow but inexorable until she came hard, wonderfully, rocking against him with the convulsions of her body.

He moaned against her throat as she climaxed, and through the lassitude following release she held to him, moved against him until he finished, himself, with a groan.

Afterward she inspected her handiwork: sets of overlapping nailmarks vivid against his fair skin. "They won't last past the night," she said.

"True," Gabranth agreed.

"Tomorrow, when they have faded, we will speak. For now I would sleep," she said, and he acceded, and stretched out beside her, and she tucked her head into the curve of his shoulder.

***

AN: Title is from Scars, by Munroe Sickafoose.

Date: 2007-07-26 01:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mithrigil.livejournal.com
Mm, impending discussion.

The storytelling is so organic, and the differences in their voices become very pronounced. I love that. Just. A lot.

Date: 2007-07-26 01:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpegasus.livejournal.com
<3
fabulous

Date: 2007-07-26 01:24 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] laylah.livejournal.com
<3 <3 <3 <3

Everything I could have hoped for from this prompt and more, you are so very kind to me. agjhdflhlkj. just.

Training mastiffs! The too-serious duel! Gabranth laughing -- so many of the men in this game need more chances to laugh.

And both of them cherishing the marks.

And -- not unwanted, and not unwelcome. oh. ohgod. trust kink like YES. <3

thank you so, so very much.

Date: 2007-07-26 02:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sheffiesharpe.livejournal.com
The cut made an arc that was nearly artistry, curving down from below his collarbone to under his pectoral muscle in a single smooth sweep.

"Sparring with Zecht," he said, briefly, this time without proffered explanation. When her hand stopped at the edge of the scar, covering his heart, he covered her hand in turn with his own.


I...my jaw dropped at this. I flail so very worshipfully in your direction.

And yes. Impending discussion. Scars. Brilliant.

Date: 2007-07-27 12:19 am (UTC)
lassarina: (Default)
From: [personal profile] lassarina
*Dead* Scars. Scars and discussion and purrrrrrr this is so, so gorgeous. Mmmmmmm.

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