I'm almost done with my "Judge Magisters doing screwball comedy" fic but in the meantime, here's an apt place-holder. These are four little drabbles involving Drace, Vayne and Gabranth, written for Puellanerdii and Acerbitas for the last drabble challenge I held. Now I only have to post up the gabazillion (rough estimate!) Larsa/Penelo drabbles I've written and I'm through!
In any case, I hope you two enjoy! And comments, corrections and criticism are, as always, completely welcome and loved! After all, a little encouragement never fails to add a bit of inspiration...
Title: Four Infernos
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Characters/Pairings: Lopsided Vayne/Drace, Drace/Gabranth
Rating: Hard R, Implied (Non-explicit) Sex
Summary: Drace was a woman who already knew all the temperaments of both heaven and hell on earth.
Warnings: Beware pitch dark themes and dubiously-consensual sex
I. Drace/Vayne, Silence
Even in the darkness, her would-be lord's eyes stand out, dark and gleaming against the dying light that would consume them both.
"Would you," he asks her, voice rich and smooth and as cold as the silver he is gently angling against her now, "hold all my secrets if I asked you to? You would die for me if I needed to, as would all of your ilk-- but more precious even than that is what other services you could offer me... and what aid I could in turn render you."
Beneath her gag, Drace's jaw works furiously as she tries to tell him just where he can shove his aid up right now... only to stop short as he runs the very edge of his toy against the rim between her legs. "Ah, you didn't know it could pulse quite like that, did you, Judge Magister? But I'm a man of many means, some of which even you don't know."
His eyes gleam as he draws Drace closer, naked flesh pressing against naked breasts, his hands working down her silky hair, down her tense back, playing gently with the bonds that held her from escaping his scrutiny once more.
"And if you wanted to know... Would you hold your silence for me if I needed you to? Even if I didn't cut out your tongue for defying me? Oh, would you?"
II. Drace/Vayne, loss of control
"How dare he," her lord hisses, even as he pushes her down to his floor and straddles her, already hard enough to ache even through layers upon layers of formal cloth, robes and hose.
Even in her present position of being sprawled and bared solely for his pleasure, Drace feels a tiny flicker of victory run through her. "How dare who?" she asks coolly, ignoring the way he is now yanking her mailed shirt open to grasp her breasts with hands that shake with emotions she doesn't want to know.
"You know," Vayne retorts, and she wonders if he will actually backhand her tonight, use his might rather than his insufferable cunning and calculations to extract from her what he will. Already his fingers are forming deep furrows in her skin, raking across her aureole, her collar bone. "That god-forsaken Landisler, that mongrel dog that think of himself so highly, that's decided he wanted you. How dare he try to…"
"Try to what?" Drace baits, and she doesn't care what her erstwhile lover might do to her-- she'll say as she wills. She struggles up on her elbows and bares her teeth... and when the blow he has been saving for her-- that she has been longing for-- finally comes, she talks through a smile marred by the slightest bit of blood and more than a little triumph. "Try to find me? Try to talk to me? Try to treat me as though I were not his pet or his prize but something completely real?"
"Try to possess you," Vayne finally snaps, and Drace knows she's earned her victory from the way he turns his gleaming eyes downwards and away, at last, as she willed. "Try to have you when only I have that privilege-- that privilege that I will never render to any others, not when it comes to you."
III. Drace/Gabranth, Secret Meetings
When Gabranth kisses her, he does it softly, as though he feels she might break against him with the slightest bit of pressure. And even a few years ago, before she had come under Vayne's eye, she would have protested and thought he were treating her as fragile deliberately, in order to undermine her or prove her lesser. But she has long since learned true degradation and honest desperation, and the delicate line of his kisses and tender press of his fingertips that he renders her each and every time feels like a balm to everything within her.
"Will you," he asks in between those kisses, in between those presses, in between all those things that help her feel whole once more. "Will you be punished if Lord Vayne ever realizes that you are… you will not yield yourself up for him alone? If he realizes, will you…?"
She stops him with another kiss and reaches out between themselves, where exertions that have ended only a few moments before leave them entwined once more. He shudders against her neck and cups a hand against her breast to feel her heart beat and she sighs against the gesture. "Probably. But what could he do to me that he hasn't done already?"
Even caressing her, Gabranth's voice manages to be bone dry. "He could kill you. Seeing as how you aren't undead, I'm quite sure he hasn't done that before."
Drace laughs and he laughs with her and for a moment, she feels young and warm and free again, as though nothing could hurt him in the quiet circle they manage to render for themselves. "Aye, Gabranth, that is one thing I am not." But the melancholy comes back after a minute because she knows too much of the world, knows she can't escape it whole. "But even if such became the case… well. Who could say I might not appreciate being free of his attentions once more?"
Her lover-- her real one, the one she chose, the one she will always be happy to return to-- is silent for a long time. For a minute, Drace wonders if perhaps he's fallen asleep after all, as he has occasionally done in the aftermath of their encounters together. But when he finally speaks, his voice is sad. "Would you truly welcome that, Drace? Would you?"
"Better dead," she manages after a moment, "than fully broken." And when he kisses her again, he swallows up the fear that such a consequence might have already occurred.
IV. Gabranth: The End
Every time he closes his eyes, he can still picture her perfectly.
This is not right, Gabranth knows. This is not good and not fair, not respectful and not truthful. It's simply not right to keep thinking of his lost love when he inevitably wound his way back to abusing himself, not when the hands he uses to cup himself are also the same pair that dispatched her only a few days before. This is not-- it shouldn't be-- it simply cannot ever--
But still, there she is, whenever he closes his eyelids and lets sheer adrenaline take over. There Drace is, all light hair and dark eyes-- sharp teeth and crooked smile-- and oh god he wants her still, so, so, so. He had killed her, he had gutted her, for nothing less than the sake of protecting what she loved most-- and still he wants her so badly the feeling is ground into his very bones. And every time he closes his eyes and touches himself as she had once told him to do for her pleasure, he can still picture her as she had been so many nights before.
He can still picture her, eyes hazy and limbs languid and mouth terribly, delightfully amused. He can still imagine her lying across his bed, hair draped against his pillows, laughing with slow, lilting languor as he had hastily undressed himself for her. He can still envision her on her hands and knees before him, one hand curled loosely around his cock as the other dipped between her own legs, somehow fully in control of everything around her no matter what, destined to strive till the end for her own goals and honor--
He can still-- he can still-- he can still--
Is it wrong, he thinks desperately even as his fingers splays over his fraught flesh, to want so much what he can no longer have in all the rest of the living world? To long for what is irretrievable and inaccessible, unlawful and unreachable and utterly inescapable? To hope so desperately for what he himself had banished from the farthest reaches of earth?
And even if it is, does it even matter, considering how much he has damned himself by loving her so very long before?
Author's Note: I still hate Noah, y'all. I haven't warmed up to him at all, nuh-uh. And don't try to change my mind either! ;)
And for someone who has had all of two scenes in a game weighted with plenty of dynamic and interesting characters, Drace is a hell of a lot of tragic fun to write. Must… produce… more… fic on her… soon!