kinkfest | FFXII -- Ashe/Basch (Reply)

Title: Should
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII

Characters: Ashe and Basch

Author/Artist: mithrigil
Rating: R
Warnings: Bondage, and neither party knows the rules.
Word count: 1400
Summary: Ashe would know the extent of Basch’s investment in…this.

Should

Mithrigil Galtirglin

“I want you to tie me up.”

What would have been a protestation sits hoarse and dry at the rim of Basch’s throat.

The clarification comes quick, “As a measure of your investment in this. We have been having sex for some time now,” and she says it so calmly, only the faintest hint of a disbelieving stutter before that phrase, ‘having sex’, as if there is nothing else to call it, and Basch is certain that there is something else to call it, “and it is always left to me to—to initiate it. And direct it. And I would know that you are not merely allowing me to use you.”

“Of course not,” he manages to say without hitching, by breathing deep and twice and holding her eyes. Surely she is not fully resolved in this. Surely not, if she savors her blinks, if her chest heaves so slightly.

“And no doubt the image has crossed your mind,” she prompts.

“Never,” he says truly.

She smiles a bit. “It is now.”

It is.

“Basch.”

He is honest with her, slow with his speech. “It is not an enticing thing to me, to think of you bound.” To think of anyone bound, he does not say. His hands are curled into fists on his thighs, beneath the table, digging into him the way his heels dig into the floor. “But I will do as my Lady commands.”

She seethes. “That is not what this should be about.”

As she leans her palms into the table and gets to her feet—slow as his words—Basch stares. He holds her eyes, consoles himself with the flickers of uncertainty in them, does not flinch as she comes around to his side of the table, and then to his side. Her palm and fingers are warm on his neck, grit with dead skin that she has ceased to care for in these months afield. She leans down to him, but does not loom over, and that seems a concession.

“You should desire this,” she says, and Basch know she does not mean bondage, does not mean games. She means he should desire “What we have,” she goes on, “what I am entrusting you with. Or else we should not have begun this at all.”

He agrees. She kneads the juncture of his neck. He still agrees.

“And I want that,” she says, and there has not been a stutter in the resolve of her eyes since she began with her logic. “I want you to…to do what you want with me.”

What she does not say—Basch hears it—is that she knows not how else to go about it. That if she has any part in this at all, he is not acting on his own desires.

“I cannot make you want this,” she admits, eyes closed, head bowed over his, and he nearly reaches up to touch her cheeks. “I should not be making you want this.”

“You are not,” he tells her plain.

“Then you should not have to prove to me that you do.”

“No,” he agrees, “I should not.”

The image is still in his mind, where she thrust it unbidden—of her in his restraints, that cage, blood spattered in widening streaks on her shoulders, her cheeks. But that is not what she intends, he tells himself, and leans up into her touch. When did he close his eyes? The hand on his skin is reassuring in its warmth, its subtle urgency.

He admits, “I do not know what you want.”

“Don’t take it into account.” She rakes a palm up to his day’s-beard, brushes her fingers against his hair. “It is not…it amounts to wanting to know. What you would have of me.”

“And you think you will learn this by—”

“By not showing you what I want. By…by trusting you with that.”

His lips are closed, his eyes are open. Hers are the same.

“Tonight,” he tells her. “Second watch.”

“Yes.”

Her tent, he assumes. In the past, she has always come to him. If this is to be different, it is to be different, and so he raps his toe on the nearest post, twice, once soft, once hard. The second knock is loud enough to make him shiver—however far they are from the nomads’ encampment, and from the others, the tone still rings through the clear air. And she draws him in quickly, and it is not so dark that he can ignore the raised brows, the resigned surprise on her face.

The tentflap closes—it is dark now, and she is against him, and the cloth walls close around and over him. It takes moments for him to remember that he must kiss her first. He doesn’t. “Have you—”

“Beside the bedroll,” she answers, and her knees are sharp on his hips. “You…you are going to do this?”

She wants only to hear ‘yes’. He keeps the reasons to himself.

He finds no rope beside them—her belts and baldric wound into coils, instead. The leather of it is slick in his hands, as his lips are with the questions of how she means for this to happen, why she means for this to happen, but he bites back those words, pinning them to the bedroll under his knees. She does not so much as offer up her hands to him—he has to find them, take them, has to feel her skin trembling and wonder if the shivering is actually his own.

Dare he ask if she is certain?

Instead, he kisses her. This he can do, and not just to buy him time to decide. He loves the way she kisses, and that has not changed, still this powerful, cowing ardor. Even as they lay, with her beneath him, the kiss is hers, and he is at the mercy of it.

His fists tighten around the belts he has gathered. Her meaning is clear.

As he raises her arms over her head, supports himself above her, he cannot help but think there is something missing, something he should say. The skin of her forearms is smooth, goosefleshed as he nooses the braid of her baldric around them. He is still not desirous of this, and doubtless she can feel that from how they are sprawled, and her hips pulse under his, testing, goading. She does dictate this, even when she is holding herself back, her meaning is clear, and he wonders where her blade is, if he’s using the strap of the sheath to bind her to a tentpost.

A faint gasp beads against his collar. He stops, grits his teeth, and rises from her. He skulks on fours to the post—cannot ask if she is comfortable, cannot ask if this is good—and loops the baldric through a belt, and knots it there.

He must ask, he must, “Is this enough?”

She curls over, testing the restraint, and smirks. “I know not,” she whispers. “Is it?”

He will not say that he wants what is best for her.

Returning to her side, drawing a hand along the knots to make sure they are tight enough not to rake—he knows restraints, knows what will hurt, and wishes none of it upon her—he recoils from the shudder of her skin, from the terse, quiet laughter on her lips. He has forgotten to remove her clothing. He is incredulous.

Yet one of his hands is gathering the fabric at her side. The heel of his palm slides up her skin as he bares it. She has taken off her armor and cincher, at least, for sleep, but the rest of her is girt and decent. She had made no move to protest this. She has given him no instructions.

Something clicks into place.

He knows how much she wants this, by how her lips halt before the commands can form, by the stutter of her elbows off the ground, by her eyes as they fight to stay open. His hands are beneath her shirt now, he still does not believe he neglected to remove it, and cold crawls through every hair on his skin.

“You,” she breathes up at him, and there is anger in it, resignation, disbelief, “you…do not.”

“No,” he whispers, and even he can barely hear it. “Not like this. Not like this.”

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