kinkfest | Imperial [Final Fantasy XII] [Vayne x Gabranth] (Reply)

Title: Imperial
Author/Artist:

manic_intent
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Vayne x Gabranth, implied Vayne x Ashe
Warnings: d/s
Word count: 4,258
Summary: The consequences of losing an Emperor's trust. Prompt: "punishment/domination - Vayne won, and Gabranth is to answer for his actions"
A/N: Thank you so much to whoever wrote this prompt!

[A/N: I love this pairing. :D However I was, at the beginning, tempted to do something extremely silly and fluffy (losing at a drinking game, Photoshoot AU) but decided against it in the end, as silly and (a little) fluffy was covered by the Bergan story. So blame Bergan, Gabranth. XD (afterward: Damnit, fluff happened anyway.)

In a more serious comment: I don’t want to go through all the problems of playing with the Undying and his weird physiology (again, lol), so I’m going to pretend that fusing with Venat made Vayne into Magneto.]

- Final Fantasy XII, Vayne/Gabranth: punishment/domination - Vayne won, and Gabranth is to answer for his actions

Imperial

I. Sticks and Stones

Gabranth knew that he would soon die. He had been dancing with the Reaper since the Pharos, his ribs set poorly after the crushing impact with the pillar; worse now, with the bladework over his shoulder and belly, long numbed, blood sticky in the joints of his twisted armor. He couldn’t move, and at the edge of his hazing vision, set to a wall freshly scorched by magic’s touch, he can see Larsa’s pale, outstretched fingers.

His liege is not dead, Gabranth tells himself. Merely unconscious. And soon the sounds of battle from the balcony would cease. He’ll wait to hear his brother’s voice before he faints. He will wait.

Blood is filling slowly into his mouth by the time the crackle of magic and the clash of metal dies away, and he spits, with a wet cough and the stench and taste of copper. Not long now. He can hear a measured, heavy tread to his back, feel it through his shoulder and the side of his skull against the enamel ground. The footsteps pause, for a moment (Larsa?) then continue.

Pressure on his shoulder, turning him over: he coughs again, about to weakly chide his brother, and notices, with dull horror, that the pressure was from a boot. Gabranth drew his eyes upward, at the brilliant, restless coils of brass and silver and gold that writhe over the lean, bared torso and corded arms, snakelike, a disturbingly organic-seeming armor, over the savage smile that held the remnants of bloodlust; the cold eyes that seemed to take victory for granted.

“Vayne,” Gabranth whispers. He can’t see beyond the man, thank Gods.

“Look what you’ve done to yourself,” Vayne’s tone is gently reproachful, and Gabranth is glad his body is too damaged to react. It’s a mocking reminder of what they once had, before they’d betrayed each other in turn, and he’s too tired to feel anything but numb. With some effort, he turns his face away, or tries to – metal tendrils force his chin back, none too gently, to meet Vayne’s smile as brass and gold surgically shear the twisted armor off his chest. He takes in a breath, choking on the blood, the constriction caused by dents against his ribs disappearing.

“You betrayed me,” Vayne says, looking away to the side. He sounds more amused than angered, and it takes Gabranth’s hazing vision a moment to realize that the greenish blur suddenly dangling in front of him is a potion. He grits his teeth, but Vayne merely chuckles. Metal tendrils pinch his nose shut, and Gabranth tries for a moment before his injured frame disobeys. The potion is blessedly cold; he chokes only for a moment, feels the uncomfortable sensation of stretching as his wounds knit. The coils of metal draw back, and he rolls onto his side, onto shaking arms, and coughs blood onto the ground.

“And what a mess you’ve made of my ship,” Vayne continues, turning around and padding over to his brother. He kneels, places a hand on the child’s brow, and Gabranth finds that he has still strength enough within him to grope blindly for his strewn blade, spit a hoarse curse, and stagger to his feet.

He manages to take one step before coils of metal arrow back from Vayne’s gauntlets, tangling him in place; the blade is wrenched from his fingers and thrown across the room, to sink shuddering into a wall. His hands are yanked up, over his head, and Gabranth struggles half-heartedly for a moment, still too weak from loss of blood to do much more than curse his former master.

“Noah,” Vayne murmurs, and Gabranth can see the edges of sensuous lips curved into a lopsided grin. “Not in front of children.”

“Don’t touch him.”

Vayne snorts. “I won’t hurt him. When have I ever raised my hand against Larsa save in self-defense? You, on the other hand, are a poorly trained hound that has dared bite the hand of its master. What am I to do with you?”

For all that the smile directed at him over a bared shoulder is playful, Gabranth can read all too easily the menace in cold eyes. He meets the stare silently, sullenly, even as the smile turns into a smirk and the coils of metal around his ankles writhe upwards, in a mockery of a lover’s caress. Gabranth bites down on his lip, hard, as warming metal slips under his undershirt to flick at pebbling nipples; other coils wind round his throat, and the rest – Gods – slide slowly into his breeches, and he finds he’s holding his breath as he feels the first rasp of metal against the base of his flaccid prick.

Footsteps behind him give Vayne pause: Gabranth exhales as the metal curls back up against his waist, instead, and for a moment he hopes. But it’s the guard.

“Lord Vayne!”

“Ah, Lieutenant. Rally your remaining men and take those still surviving out in the balcony into the wards. Separate wards. Take my brother in his rooms and post a guard on the doors.”

“Sir.” An Imperial comes into his line of vision: the helmeted head regards him briefly, then obviously decides to ignore him.

“How goes the battle?”

“The Rebellion is in rout, and we are within firing distance of Rabanastre.”

“Halt the Bahamut.” Vayne gives Gabranth a final, searching glance, then metal forces his arms behind his back, and he hisses as he falls heavily onto his back. The coils twist, leaving his ankles and wrists shackled, the collar still uncomfortable around his neck, the rest returning to Vayne’s arms. “Carry the Magister to my rooms, then open a connection to the Marquis.” Vayne’s smile was cold. “Perhaps with the life of his niece in my hands he would be more willing to speak terms of surrender.”

Gauntlets close over his shoulders and under his knees as the Imperials hasten to obey. He can sense their awed fear, as Vayne sweeps past.

0.1 words

Vayne looks tired, Larsa thinks, when he first wakes, sitting up cautiously on the bed in his cabin; tired and worn and pale, staring out through the steelglass window at the endless clouds, a man yet desperately swimming against the fringe of Fate.

II. The other coin

Power has always been an aphrodisiac to Vayne, and as such Gabranth is a little surprised when on the Emperor’s return he merely seemed tired, pouring himself a drink from the crystal bar in his opulent cabin. The soldiers had left him on the carpet, and he had long lost feeling in his pinned arm and leg.

Eventually, Gabranth hears the glass clink on the bar, then Vayne pushes him onto his back, looks him over cursorily before bending down to savage his mouth, possessive and hungry. He tries to bite, but Vayne growls, and he stops, automatic, shocked. The Emperor is smirking when he pulls back – that had not escaped him – and tendrils of metal rip the rest of his undershirt from him.

“Hn.” Vayne absently traces the still-healing scars. The potion had not been enough, and the wounds are tender, but Gabranth makes no sound, glaring. “You’ve grown thinner.”

Gabranth keeps stubbornly silent, but he gasps when metal makes short work of his breeches and underclothes before dragging his thighs apart. His breath catches as Vayne spits delicately onto his right glove, then strokes him, sure and firm, and he’s arching involuntarily into the pressure, whining deep in his throat; he’s not sure when was the last time he’d hated himself so.

“You’ll call me master again soon enough,” Vayne muses, leaning his cheek against a knee as he grins, wolfish and predatory, and at the familiar sight his breath catches, his balls growing heavy, even as Gabranth bares his teeth and spits. Vayne chuckles as he wipes his cheek with the back of his free hand.

Later Vayne takes him long and deep and slow, on the bed, his voice hitching in his throat and his ankles pressed tight to the Emperor’s back; the metal wrapped into brilliant claws that cut into his shoulders a little with each rolling thrust. He knows what Vayne is doing to him, and his eyes are wild even after his flesh has long succumbed to Vayne’s will: Gabranth knows the other man sees that, knows it amuses him.

He’s left, afterwards, curled and unsatisfied and soiled, his breath in harsh sobs, at the foot of the bed. Vayne strokes a warm metal claw down his sweating flank, then hooks it briefly into his collar and stifles a yawn.

The sound makes him snarl, though past his raw throat it simply turns into a hacking cough. “Bastard,” Gabranth settles for muttering. “You won’t break me this way.”

“And why would I want to break you?” Vayne inquires, smirking. “’Tis merely discipline.”

“I won’t be your pawn again.”

“Of course,” Vayne shrugs. “You can’t. Gabranth, after all, is quite unfortunately dead. Any preferences on the color of your coffin?”

“What?” Gabranth blinks.

“You perished on the Bahamut. Most unfortunate.” Vayne pets his shoulder mockingly, metal rasping over flesh. “There’ll be a State funeral when we return to Archades.”

“The soldiers saw me.”

“Oh, I doubt that very much,” Vayne drawls, and Gabranth recalls their palpable fear.

“Then you’ll have me believe that you’re keeping me here as a… a…”

“Pet?” The fingers return to the collar, flicking it. He winces reflexively. “Quite so. Until you earn my trust again.” A lazy smirk tells him that Vayne does not think this possible. “I am sure you will have ample time within which to reflect on the folly of first losing it.”

0.2 reflection

He manages somehow to drag himself to the private washing facilities in the Emperor’s chambers, when Vayne leaves for matters of State, and there’s a mirror: the Gabranth he sees has kiss-reddened lips and a day’s worth of scruff, dark-ringed blank eyes, filthy, fingerprint bruises over narrow hips; he closes his eyes, leans his forehead against the glass, and breathes it frosted.

III. Bells

Ashelia Dalmasca tells him exactly what she thinks of his suggestion in words that Vayne is fairly sure a Princess had no business knowing, and it makes him smirk. He has to admit he likes her: likes the fire and steel within her, so unlike the noble-born women in Archadia.

When she runs out of breath he turns away from the stained glass windows. The Princess and her entourage had been given guest rooms in the Palace, and so far they’d made four relatively intelligent attempts to escape, one of which had done quite some damage to the winter gardens.

“Finished?” he asks dryly.

“I did not think you quite this low,” Ashelia says coldly. “If you even think that I will… out of…”

“Arranged marriages, Princess, have been induced by both our families since our ancestors first sat on a throne,” Vayne shrugs. He rubs his left wrist absently: he had long learned to suppress the power he had gained from Venat, but he could feel its insistent pulse in his blood. Sometimes he wonders where the Occuria had gone, when it had fused its power into him.

“If ‘tis much comfort to you, I have little interest in women, and certainly no interest in you in that respect.” After all, his interest in matters of such regard is currently intricately entangled with the man bound on his bed. Afterwards. Anticipation was half the pleasure.

“Then?” Ashelia looks a little taken aback: there are hints of color in her cheeks, as though she does not know whether to feel insulted.

“Think of it as politics, Princess. Soon you will need gil to repair your kingdom. Dalmasca is mostly desert, and it was never quite self-sufficient to begin with.”

“By your logic, should I not marry myself off instead to Al-Cid?” Ashelia’s tone is glacial. “Assuming, of course, that we cannot trade for what we need instead.”

“And also assuming we stop military action against a rebelling state,” Vayne counters. “Dalmasca belongs to the Empire at the moment, Princess.”

“What do you get from this?” Ashelia asks tightly, her pretty eyes now narrowed.

“Peace, both from Dalmasca and Bhujerba, and possibly from Rozarria. Both Dalmasca and Bhujerba and reserves of natural magicite, with which we can indeed trade for necessities, were Archadia so inclined.”

“You wish to invade…”

“Tch, Princess.” Vayne interrupts. “I have accomplished what I set out to do: destabilize Occuria control. To do that I needed Dalmasca’s shard, and that is the only reason why I invaded your beggared country.”

Ashelia’s anger flares for a moment, as she reddens, then she forces control over her temper with visible effort. Vayne hides a smile: in this girl there is every bit a Queen worthy of Empire. She considers his words stiffly, looking away, and he thinks her quite the lioness, even now: she seeks weakness in his words and his visage, looking for a reason to pounce. “What about children?”

“I have no need of heirs.”

“You have a son?” Ashelia’s girlish curiosity escapes but for a brief moment, then the Princess looks slightly embarrassed at the outburst, but she does not apologize.

“No. But my brother is a fit successor, were I to bore of the throne.” He speaks truth. Even despite all that has occurred, Vayne knows Larsa to be a young, lonely child who still desperately loved his brother: his regard would be easy to regain.

He can see her resolve weakening at this statement, but he waits. Patience would bear better result. Finally, Ashelia asks, “But if Dalmasca remains part of the Empire, then governance will still fall to your chosen Consul.”

“Or to the restored Queen, as part of her duties as Empress. You can return to your desert kingdom or spend time in Archades scandalizing the nobility with your demeanor.”

“Where appropriate, you will find that my conduct can at least befit that of a Queen,” Ashelia says, imperious and disdainful and magnificent, “While so far as I have seen, the behavior of Archadia’s gentlemen leave something to be desired.”

He would applaud her rapier tongue, but she would slap him. Vayne settled for inclining his head. “It would be my pleasure to prove otherwise, Princess.”

“You are a silver tongued treacherous bastard of a serpent and I know better than to take your words at face value,” Ashelia replies coldly, “And I will need time to think this ‘offer’ over.”

“Take as much as you wish, Princess.” Besides, Vayne knows that after the initial novelty of running an Empire fades, he would need some continuous challenges with which to amuse himself, and now he has three: his brother, his Queen, his Knight.

0.3 the dress

The dress, Ashelia decides, is old-fashioned and prudish and gaudy, too heavy, and she can’t breathe in the damned corset, and she tells Vayne so, tartly; he drawls it was my mother’s and she snaps something about perversity and complexes: to that he laughs, and she thinks, all unbidden, that she would not, could not have said something like that to Rasler.

IV. The Twenty-third Hour

“I was married today,” Vayne comments, and grins when Gabranth stills abruptly in his lap, his blue eyes wide and shocked. Vayne snaps his hips upwards, and the other man shivers, with a choked sound that he stifles quickly: though, so far, Vayne felt, Gabranth had really been riding him far harder than resistance would dictate, even with his bound, swollen prick squeezed and slick between them.

He watches him closely – and there, a flicker in narrowing blue eyes – then Gabranth looks away, his tone too husky and hoarse to sound sarcastic. “So, whose marital bed have I usurped?”

“Ashelia Dalmasca.” Vayne has the pleasure of seeing Gabranth’s handsome face go almost slack with astonishment, then darken.

“Did you force-”

“What do you think?” Vayne inquires, honestly curious. The metal coils that shackle Gabranth’s wrists together are hot and slick against the nape of his neck, and they haven’t quite kept his pet from scratching him; the weals from blunt nails sting, but he has satisfied his immediate lust for the night, so he does not force his pet to continue, waiting.

Gabranth squirms, gasping, as Vayne digs his fingers more deeply into his hips, but doesn’t speak; not until Vayne trails idle hands up his back, crossed with grids of skin reddened from the lash. His pet moans under his touch, pressing his own abused flesh into callused pads as he arches, then he blinks and shakes his head sharply.

“For a… given meaning of ‘force’, mayhap,” he says then, self-mocking, and Vayne pulls Gabranth’s chin up into a bruising kiss, as his pet begins to move again, atop him, and all of his accord. He won’t let Gabranth come today, Vayne decides.

04. of one

Gabranth considers the question posed much later, when the agony subsides to an uncomfortable (but no longer unfamiliar) ache; he shakes his head and smiles, bitter and wry, dragging himself up onto his elbows and inching up to steal a kiss from a sleeping King.

V. His Mirror

It is only when Larsa politely (and all too boyishly) asks Ashelia for a dance, and him almost comically shorter than she, that it occurs to Vayne that he had not once thought of asking Ashelia to marry Larsa. Certainly it would have sufficed for his purposes.

Ashelia Dalmasca is stunningly beautiful tonight in proper clothing, black silk drawn with the purest pearls, emeralds around her throat and her callused hands hidden in velvet gloves, breasts dusted with gold lace, and Vayne vaguely enjoys the polite admiration of every ladies’ man in the room. He’s amused by it, in any case; besides, Ashelia has shown herself to be discreet enough in her affairs.

Vayne is not quite so sure how to react to any children, however, and as he considers this thoughtfully it takes him a while before he realizes Larsa’s dance has finished and his brother is plucking at his sleeve, seated beside him.

“Yes?”

“Would I ever be an uncle?” Larsa asks, and his smile is playful. A Solidor’s smile, Vayne notes, with some satisfaction: it is only innocent on the surface.

“Do you want to be one?” Vayne counters with his own.

He is alone at the Royal’s table, at the edge of the ballroom floor close to the band: the other dignitaries already mingling over the buffet. Ashelia is dancing with her knight, Basch fon Ronsenburg, the street rats in her entourage already happily browsing the dessert spread. The pirates had fled for Balfonheim once released.

“It would depend,” Larsa follows his gaze back to Ashelia. “On the circumstances.”

“Likewise.” His brother is yet too young to play at fencing with him. “When would I be an uncle?” He shoots the perfumed, fluttering clusters of womenfolk a brief, significant glance.

Larsa frowns at him, and Vayne chuckles, taking another sip of his frothy champagne. “I am not even of age.”

“Yet,” Vayne points out, amiably.

“She is a good choice as your Queen,” Larsa is trying to dig again, in his as yet unpolished way, and Vayne parries without effort.

“She may have beggared me today,” Vayne grumbles. He had been trying to forge a trade agreement with Ashelia regarding Dalmasca, and she had, to his surprise, shown a remarkable grasp of trade economics as well as a fishwife’s tenacity at haggling. Mentioning that last to her had likely been unwise, come to think of it.

“You may need to work on your compliments, brother,” Larsa grins, evidently coming to the same thought, then he sobers. “At the beginning, I thought that you forced her into matters.”

“For a given meaning of force,” Vayne murmurs, echoing, but sips his champagne when Larsa frowns. “It was mutually expedient. The alternative,” he added teasingly, “Was for her to marry you.”

Larsa blushes furiously. “Brother!”

“Granted it would be about four, five years before there could have been nephews or nieces, but I could have waited,” Vayne smirks. Larsa pouts at him, and then reflexively knocks his hand away when Vayne pets him patronizingly on the head.

“I think she could be good for you,” Larsa says softly, “Now that Gabranth is gone.”

Again a Solidor’s innocence. Vayne is saved from answering by the Murict Consul, a florid, man with a large moustache and an impressive paunch, who had waddled up to the table. “Lord Emperor, I must extend my congratulations.”

“Thank you, Lord Allran,” Vayne inclines his head.

“Your lady wife the Empress Ashelia is most intelligent and compassionate,” Allran mops his brow. “She was informing me of her intention to provide free schooling for the denizens of Lower Archades! They lack only the opportunity, she says, to become valuable to Archadia. Her Majesty has expressed to me that she hopes someday to be able to extend this opportunity even to the tithe-states!”

It is only with a lifetime of discipline that Vayne only smiles indulgently. “She is young and idealistic, Lord Allran. It makes the relationship… refreshing.” From the periphery of his vision, he can see Ashelia’s faint smirk. He swallows his ire and toasts her audacity with a dip of his glass, as Larsa begins to laugh.

0.5 queen of all

Vayne dances with deceptive grace, a warrior’s coiled strength in his sure, elegant steps, but he guides, his eyes challenging her, allowing her to lead this dance; she bares her teeth at him, quite aware of motive and concession, and makes sure to step hard on his feet (he smirks, but it’s pained).

VI. Twenty-one Grams

“You cannot keep me secret forever,” Gabranth murmurs. The Emperor’s private quarters are fairly extensive, including even a personal library and indoor garden: Gabranth sits at the edge of the pond with his breeches rolled to his knees, his feet in the water, a book in his lap. Carp flicker around his ankles, gold and silver and red crescents; Vayne pauses before he steps onto the raised bamboo platform that surrounds the pond and stores this vision into his memory.

“I would wager few remember you,” Vayne settles beside him, on his haunches. Gabranth smells better now than he did the last they were lovers: soaps and scents, no oils and metal. The collar around his throat is now thin leather, and Gabranth no longer needs shackles.

“Your Queen would. Your brother.”

“The first I have yet to convince, even now, that I am not a ‘silver tongued bastard of a serpent’,” Vayne drawls, “And the latter already suspects, I believe.” He had come to some manner of a wary truce with Ashelia, one enlivened now and then by mutual schemes, sniping and the occasional skirmish. “I have little to lose.”

“And you could always have me killed, were it to prove inconvenient.” Gabranth looks down at his lap, turns a page.

“I could,” Vayne says. He doesn’t sound convincing even to himself, and at that, Gabranth smiles. Irritably, Vayne adds, “Ah yes, and it seems that I have a son.”

“It seems?” Gabranth arches an eyebrow. “And who is the unfortunate lady?”

“Ashelia,” Vayne mutters, and as Gabranth raises both eyebrows, he growls, “On hindsight, being drunk during the last ball in Laurens was inadvisable. Our guests had given us rooms together. You can imagine that the morning after was fairly awkward.”

“I can imagine,” Gabranth murmurs, and begins to chuckle. “Only one night?”

Vayne nods tightly. The sheer chance of it happening should have been small. Ashelia had, in her letter to him, called her ‘dear husband’ a remarkable number of names that should have scorched parchment. Just thinking about the complications this had caused gave him a mild headache, and he hopes that she is mistaken, that the child is not his, but he knows, gloomily, that it likely is. Vayne passes Gabranth the letter from inside his jacket.

Gabranth finds it highly amusing, of course, as had Larsa (who he had not in fact given the letter to, but who had purloined it from his office). “How do you know that the child is male?”

“It would only be my damned luck.” Sourly, he wonders how he is going to get Ashelia to agree to education, presence, visits and names. He prays fervently that she does not decide to name the child Rasler. Or, Gods, Noah.

Gabranth smirks, leans forward, and kisses him, a lover’s brief and familiar caress, before returning to his book, apparently not noticing Vayne’s fleeting expression of surprise. “Misfortune is not always what it appears to be.” He looks, for the want of a better word, content.

0.6 weight of

Vayne exhales, sits down beside him, presses close, and rests his chin on a broad shoulder. The world turns.

-fin-