kinkfest | Final Fantasy XII (Vayne/Balthier) (Reply)

Title: Illusion
Author/Artist: Anya
Rating: NC17
Warnings: Bondage
Word count: 1,066
Summary: Balthier knows his freedom is but illusion.
A/N: Oct 3 - - Final Fantasy XII, Vayne/Balthier: Bondage - “Teach me a lesson.” Sorry this is late, I've been terribly busy.

Oct 3 - - Final Fantasy XII, Vayne/Balthier: Bondage - “Teach me a lesson.”

Illusion

“This was unnecessary.” Balthier dropped a crumpled paper ball on the cleared mahogany desk, his every move indicative of his disdain. He had even taken care to break the red wax seal that had adorned the foot of the letter – the winged blade, Vayne’s personal coat of arms – and it was common knowledge that an intact Solidor seal was worth thousands of gil on the black market.

The prince smiled, ensconced deep in his chair with his knee-high boots crossed: under that arresting stare, so calculating, imperious, lascivious, Balthier instinctively bit his lip, dug hold of his temper. “I had rather thought threats were beneath you.”

“Sometimes they expedite matters,” Vayne shrugged. The man was wearing a loose black robe open to the navel and richly detailed in gold brocade; soft blue cotton breeches were tucked into long white bucket-top boots. “How have you been?”

“No doubt you already know,” Balthier said, snappish and bitter. Vayne was not one to let his toys go so easily, and the prince had ways to get what he wanted whenever he wanted it. His first night of ‘freedom’, for example, upon escaping Archades, had been spent being dragged from his rented Balfonheim tavern room in the dusk to a private airship some distance away on the beach, held down by Vayne’s liveried guards while the prince had leisurely taken his pleasure, remembered still the smirk and the cold, cold eyes, the bruises possessive fingers had left on his hips. He’d been released after, dumped soiled and dazed on the sand, and Vayne had curled the fingers of one aristocratic hand briefly around his neck, the pads brushing lightly over the life-vein on his throat. A reminder.

“Perhaps so,” Vayne allowed, with ironic grace. “I do confess myself surprised, Balthier, that you and your little party have walked so blindly into the maw of the lion.”

“I tried dissuading her,” Balthier muttered. Princesses were just as difficult as princes, it seemed, whichever country they might hail from. He’d not wanted to come, but had known they would have had no chance without his contacts and his knowledge. And besides, in his case, it didn’t matter: if he had freedom it was only by the lion’s grace. He had known this since that first night in Balfonheim.

“No doubt you did, and eloquently, but the Princess Ashelia Dalmasca would not have come so far in her quest without a core of steel.”

“And the tolerance of the lion.” The sky pirate had been suspicious of Archades’ apparent blunders since Nalbina. Escaping had been too easy, finding Basch too natural. Finding one sky pirate who had changed his name in the melting pot of Balfonheim had been so simple for Vayne: what more a party of six with such strikingly recognizable faces? “What are you playing at, Vayne? You could have had her killed so easily, if you had wanted to.”

“Prey has no right to learn what the lion plans,” Vayne drawled, crossing his legs again, “And tolerance can be bought.”

Balthier shivered. He remembered being taken roughly, in secret, in Rabanastre, the rest of the party but a wall away, whimpering through the gag (the sleeve of his best shirt, the bastard), wrists stretched over his head, not so much struggling but begging. Run as he might, he was still Vayne’s. “What have I to trade that you are unable to simply take?”

“Willingness. You’ve never been quite so keen as before since you turned pirate.” And there, that ironic little smirk that Balthier hated and that Ffamran had loved.

“You miss the foolish brat who would open his mouth or spread his thighs whenever you so much as crooked your finger,” Balthier stated, his tone glacial. He’ll not turn back, not ever, not even for his companions.

“Sometimes. I find the sky pirate who runs from me and struggles when ravished, but who yet finds release so easily under my touch just as curious.”

“Again then I ask what I have to trade, when it seems willingness is not what you want.”

“And where did you decide that?” Vayne wondered out aloud, and gestured at the cleared desk. “Kneel on that and strip. Slowly, mind.”

“I’ve half a mind to leave,” Balthier said evenly, annoyed by Vayne’s confidence.

“And your companions would be arrested before you even step out the door.”

“Threats are a mark of desperation.”

“Or of a man with too little time to waste such on crafting indulgences. You’ve been quite difficult of late.”

“Then teach me a lesson,” Balthier sneered, knowing false bravado for what it was even as he spoke.

“Get on the desk.” And the command in Vayne’s voice was of such steel, even spoken so quietly, that Balthier’s cock twitched in his breeches. Balthier understood that he was bound tight to Vayne’s will, a puppet, so helpless before it that freedom was truly a cruel illusion. He pulled himself up on the desk, skirting his eyes to the sheathed blade left leaning against the paneled walls to Vayne’s right, and stole his fingers to the neck of his vest.

Later he allowed Vayne to bind him, stretched over the desk with his wrists to either corner, his hardening prick caught between the polished wood and his own weight, his ankles spread to opposite carved legs, bound with slender strips of fragile leather. Balthier barely listened to Vayne’s words, velvet and wicked, he shivered as gloved hands stroked up and down his thighs, cried out and squirmed as the first lash of the riding crop landed on his unprotected rump. He could tell that Vayne would take his time today, to thoroughly punish his flesh: pain was the least of the prince’s arsenal – it was pleasure that Balthier found difficult to endure. Under Vayne’s skilled hands he lost all will altogether, though he always fought, all the way to the last.

Sometimes Balthier wondered if that was precisely why Vayne pursued him, but could not bear the thought of surrender; his self-preservation was too strong to undertake what Vayne seemed to want him to give.

He clenched his teeth tight, aware he would soon beg, closed his mind to it, to the needs of his flesh, thought instead of the eternal sky. Someday soon he would be free.

-fin-