Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

All told, no one had seemed to be in an agreeable mood on the way down to the Find from the Crystal Tower courtyard, or after they'd arrived. Cid's expression had been positively thunderous, blue eyes dark with his agitation, and the overall feeling from the other Ironworks engineers on site ran the gamut between confusion and suspicious resignation.

Well. Almost no one. Their sudden interloper seemed quite cheerful about the entire circumstance, as though all of this were going exactly the way he had wanted and they were all just cogs in some machine he'd set in motion.

That idea was absurd, of course; Nero tol Scaeva couldn't have had much more of an inkling of what was behind those doors than anyone else here, surely. But the calm, self-assured way he moved told her he did know something, and more to the point, that he had some plan in mind for it once they’d bypassed all the security for him.

That alone was more than enough to make her wary.

She glanced from side to side, looking for Cid, but he appeared to have quit the Find in a fit of pique (not that she particularly blamed him). The other engineers were just as busy, and G'raha was animatedly chattering to Unei and Doga who were both attempting to answer his flood of questions as best as they could manage.

Everyone seemed to have quite forgotten her presence now that her ability to brute-force the doors to the Labyrinth open was no longer necessary. She wished she could feel even slightly surprised, but that was what she was here for, she supposed. The muscle, the good luck charm.

With a sigh, Aurelia approached Rammbroes' study pavilion and lifted the tent flaps, letting herself inside. If the scholar or one of his fellows -- or better yet, Cid -- was there, she could talk with them, feel out if there was anything that they ought to be concerned about before venturing into the tower should Nero's timely appearance be subterfuge for something sinister...? But the tent was---

---the tent was not empty, as it had appeared from the outside. A familiar figure turned towards the sound of her entrance, a leather-bound book clasped in one hand.

She immediately reached for her weapon, snapping, "What are you--"

Nero tol Scaeva lifted his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

"Before you cut me down in cold blood, the journal is mine own. I was attempting to compare my notes with that of your associates here."

Aurelia's eyes narrowed but the tribunus only stared back, a look that was both coaxing and challenging at the same time, as if waiting to see what she would do. Finally she relented, tucking her staff back over her shoulder. While it was obvious he'd come in here by himself to rummage through papers, it seemed that he hadn't been here much longer than she had. So it wasn't as though he had had sufficient opportunity to do anything.

Nothing she could prove at the moment, anyroad.

"And the tomestones? I can't imagine you'd want to leave those behind without having a look for yourself."

"They're welcome to them," Nero said with a dismissive shrug.

She blinked. “That was... not the answer I expected.”

"Personal experience from the Ultima Project. The majority of those tomestones will be naught more than particularly expensive paperweights; what useful data exists on them has quite likely been eroded due to time and exposure. As counterintuitive as it may seem, their decision to keep written documentation of the dig may be the wiser course of action."  His pale blue eyes had not tracked away from her face the entire time he had spoken. The gaze he’d leveled upon her was sharp, scrutinizing, intense, and this time she didn't have the benefit of his magitek armor to hide that interest from her sight.

Not that he was bothering to hide it in any way. What game was he playing...?

She broke eye contact, feeling ill at ease as she glanced at the entrance to Rammbroes' tent. She'd backed up against a nearby worktable; heavy and sturdy, it sat just below her waist, at hip height. Perfectly appropriate for a roegadyn sitting down to pen missives or peruse dusty old texts or review Allagan tomestones.

Nero was smiling but he still hadn't said anything, and that made her uncomfortable enough to finally break the silence between them with a defensive "What?"

"Any particular reason you happen to be blushing?"

"Wh- I'm not blushing."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

The right corner of his lips tugged slightly upwards, just enough to reveal a flash of canine. She chewed on her lower lip, grasping at the table for a sense of purchase and trying not to think about things she... really should not be thinking about. Really shouldn't. Like how in the seven hells a man was born with a mouth like that. It was- it was unfair.

His answering chuckle made her realize, much to her chagrin, that she had spoken aloud.

He braced his hands against the table's surface and leaned his weight back against it, slotting himself in the open space at her side. Unconsciously, Aurelia shifted herself to put a few ilms of space between them, trying not to think about the difference in height that was somehow far more noticeable now. Nero tol Scaeva was damnably tall; she was average height for a Garlean woman and still barely came up to his shoulders when they stood side by side, let alone in a position like this.

"To that end I've a question for you, eikon-slayer,” he continued smoothly, “if you would be so kind as to indulge me."

"About...?"

"I find it passing strange that a woman who can slay gods without blinking should find my presence in any way disconcerting. An artifact of your upbringing, I assume?" He was baiting her, she knew; the tone of his question was decidedly mocking. But that smile-- that had turned into something speculative and dark. Combined with the intensity of his stare, it set alight a strange, pressurized heat in the pit of her stomach. "Does Garlond elicit this reaction?"

"Cid? Hardly." Aurelia wrenched her gaze away from the movements of his lips to stare over his shoulder at the tent opening. Scholars and Ironworks engineers were passing to and fro just outside; she could see the shadows they cast upon the tarpaulin. "Cid also doesn't stand two ilms away from my face and stare me right in the eyes like he's about to devour me, so take that as you will, I suppose."

" 'Devour' you? What an interesting turn of phrase. Although I must admit you make a salient point. I cannot imagine that you are embarrassed by the slightest of his attentions as you are mine."

Was... was he trying to do what she suspected he was doing? The idea seemed laughable on its face -- Eorzea had no shortage of beautiful women, so who on earth would find her appealing? -- but the problem she currently faced was that it was actually working, damn him. It didn’t help that it had been... she couldn't remember how long since anyone had taken any sort of prurient interest in her, now that she thought about it.

Assuming of course that she wasn't just overthinking this and he wasn't putting her wind up for fun. Either way, she had to put an end to this now before it escalated any further.

"Unfortunately for you, I am not interested.” Calm, collected, and to the point. Yes, she thought; very well done.

She'd hoped that her bluntness would deter him, but that smile only widened, the maw of a hunting predator about to strike.

"Something tells me you are perhaps not being forthright with me." His tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth. "Shame on you, hero."

"I mean it. I am not interested," she repeated, this time with more resolve. "After what you did in the Prae-"

"Ah, you're concerned that I might turn on you all like a rabid dog, as it were. Worry for Garlond? Thinking I might sabotage his precious Ironworks or somesuch?"

"Not---no, none of those things, not as such, but to say I trust you would be a stretch. Not a word in all these weeks and suddenly you turn up, unannounced, as thought naught had transpired?"

"Your concern is unwarranted. Merely do I find myself with a plethora of free time in the wake of my sudden discharge from military service.”

“You-,” she began, but he was not finished.

“Lest you labor beneath the assumption that I intend you any sort of bodily harm, for a long while before we were... shall we say ‘formally introduced’, I had this recurring dream about you, me, and an interrogation chair-" At the wide flare of her eyes, he paused, only to grin at her: "...Now that, eikon-slayer, is a very interested look."

She tried to scoff at him, but it came out as a short, sharp, nervous bark.

"What look? I didn't give you any look."

"You most certainly did."

"You're reading intent where none exists-"

"Am I? Couple that with the fact you're mortified by the slightest hint of insinuation on my part and it's quite telling."

"Scaeva, I was in the legions myself once. Do you seriously think I'd not been exposed to the odd bit of barracks chatter?" She scowled at him. "I'm a chirurgeon by trade. I think I know enough of the human condition not to be easily embarrassed by such things."

There it was--the look she'd seen him pass Cid every time he was wont to needle the man in the space of a single conversation, coupled with the upwards arch of one eyebrow. She’d not realized how aggravating it was to be on the receiving end of that look until this moment, now that she was the subject of Nero's condescension. 

"I'd wager that what you believe passes for 'barracks chatter' is overwhelmingly tame. You've not heard the half of it, I assure you. Even the worst among the rank and file will behave themselves around a lady, especially if the lady in question is a pureblood."

"Perhaps if the lady had seen no military service. I imagine there is precious little they could say that would shock me."

He pushed himself upright and turned to face her, bracing his hands on either side and giving her precious little in the way of an escape route. 

“I am very willing to test your hypothesis."

"I'm sure you are.” She kept her voice steady with some considerable effort. His mouth now lingered but a bare hairsbreadth apart from her own, and trying not to think about that fact was only causing her to hyperfocus on it.

"No time like the present,” he said, “and I am a man of science. Call it professional curiosity, if you like. May I?"

He'd called her bluff, and after her own assertion she felt she had little choice but to accept the consequences. At last Aurelia nodded, stiffly, trying to ignore the faintly triumphant curl to his answering smile.

His hand cupped her jaw, warm and callused fingertips trailing the shell of her ear, palm just barely cradling the soft skin over her throat. If he wished he could close his grip and tighten it, squeeze until she had no air to breathe- but the Echo would have warned her of any killing intent. Although it gave her no indication of any danger from him, it took a conscious effort not to bolt under his arm and flee the tent. Tension thrummed through her frame like a live wire.

Nero leaned inward until they were cheek to cheek. Her breath hitched for the briefest of moments when she felt the light scrape of stubble and caught his scent: some kind of aftershave perhaps, a bit stringent but not unpleasant, and the heat in her belly clenched tight. Lips lingered at her ear and she could feel the tribunus' warm breath fanning very lightly across her skin.

Then he began to speak.

Sotto voce, in their native Garlean tongue. A soft, soporific rumble, breath just slightly uneven- and not the mildly suggestive banter or off-color jokes she’d expected but a soldier's words of coupling, rough and lascivious and filthy.

All of it aimed at her. 

Her grip on the table tightened as she willed herself to remain still through the impulse to slap him or shove him away in shocked mortification, as he well knew a proper young lady of gentle birth would have been expected to do. He knew, too; could sense her dismay, how much it cost her just to maintain some semblance of composure, and he wasn't fooled by it.

He was laughing at her, the bastard: she could hear the soft, breathy chuckles woven through his unending stream of vulgarities. Her face felt as though he had set it afire and she knew she was probably bright red right down to the roots of her hair---and then she felt the press of his mouth, a light kiss along the juncture of her jaw just beneath the earlobe.

A hot shudder of anticipation warped its way down her spine.

"So the eikon-slayer is undone by a bit of bawdy talk after all." He had not moved his lips away from her skin before speaking. She could feel the heat of his breath against her, warm and velvet and damp and gods, he was practically purring in her ear- "It would appear your theory has been disproven, hero."

She found herself unable to respond, mouth feeling suddenly very dry, swallowing with some effort. The clicking sound her throat made in her ears as she did was so, so loud.

And before she had quite managed to gather her wits again, Nero tol Scaeva straightened his posture and backed away from her position against the table with a mocking bow before tucking the journal in his coat pocket and strolling towards the tent flap. Turning his back on her, quite deliberately, and making his exit.

As though the entire exchange had never occurred.

She let out the exhalation she hadn't realized she was holding, sagging back against the sturdy oak surface of Rammbroes’ makeshift writing desk and attempting to ease her breathing into something resembling an even pace. He'd left her rattled and flustered and... burning. There was a deep, aching knot of tension that had formed in the base of her belly, one that would not fade quickly.

And she suspected that like as not, he’d only done it to prove a point, namely that his wits were malms beyond hers and her victory in the Praetorium had been but a simple fluke, a stroke of blind luck.

Small wonder Cid's hackles had been raised by his mere presence. Hells take him, the man was utterly insufferable.

After some time had passed (and the heat in her cheeks had faded), she slipped out of Rammbroes' "study" and saddled her chocobo. She had to talk to Cid about this, she decided, regardless of how sour his mood might be. Someone was going to have to keep an eye on Nero once they set foot in the tower, and given everyone else’s relative importance in the grand scheme of things, it might as well be her; she could endure his baiting so long as she made sure they had an understanding.

Aurelia didn’t see any sign of him on her way out of the camp. Doubtlessly he’d gone in search of someone or something else to act as his temporary source of entertainment until the expedition into the Tower was underway, she thought. She could not well decide if she was disappointed or relieved. 

But if he planned to behave this way the entire time, it was going to be a very, very long expedition indeed.

Chapter Text

J'lantaa Suhzu had awakened in a fair number of beds over the past few years. The life of an adventurer meant one's feet were always on the road, eyes forward to the next job, the next request, the next town over the horizon--but it also meant few chances to breathe, to think much of anything beyond where the next bag of gil would come from. It was a life she'd accepted long ago, but she treasured those days of quiet, lazy solitude all the more for their rarity. They were precious.

Mid-morning sunlight filtered through gauzy curtains, warming the bed and dappling the dark-scaled flesh of its other occupant. She still slept, breathing soft and regular, her bare chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm that did nothing to distract the Miqo'te's fond gaze from lingering over the slim figure. Her wife was often wont to use fantasia to change her appearance, but no matter what face she wore it was always the same sweet girl with the wide violet eyes and shy smile, arms open to welcome her. Avelina was her home as much as this small cottage and the bed they shared.

J'lantaa smiled and leaned back on one elbow, tracing her fingertips over one shoulder, the places where scale met flesh, grazing the curvature of one breast until her palm rested upon a smooth and slightly concave expanse of belly, just below her sternum. Avelina sighed softly and adjusted a little, but otherwise did not move.

She pressed her lips to the joining of shoulder and collarbone, leaving the barest touch against her wife's skin with the tip of her tongue, just enough to linger--and was rewarded with a soft noise above her head. Grinning mischievously, the dragoon leaned forward and closed her mouth around a taut nipple, curling her tongue about its stiffness and suckling gently: the longest kiss of all.

Fingers threaded into her hair and J'lantaa knew Avelina was most definitely not asleep any longer. Slowly she released the suction, lifting her head in time for her wife to capture her mouth in a fierce kiss that stole the breath from her, a kiss that faded into myriad small touches of her lips until they both had to come up for air. J'lantaa blinked a few times, feeling somewhat lightheaded and kiss-drunk as the white mage sat up to face her.

"Good morning, Lana," she said, yawning, as if she'd just opened her eyes seconds ago.

J'lantaa knew better than to play at coyness, however. With a soft, rumbling laugh, she wrapped her tail around Avelina's waist.

"Morning. Thought I'd wake you up so we could have some breakfast?"

Avelina gave her a chaste little peck on the cheek and then wrapped her arms around the Miqo'te's shoulders, tilting her weight forward so they both fell back against the pillows with Avelina straddling J'lantaa's waist. Her violet eyes were bright with a hunger that had nothing to do with breaking one's fast.

"We could," the Xaela said archly, "but you seem to have something different in mind."

"I've no idea what you're talking about," J'lantaa said, but she heard the breathless catch in her own voice at the same moment Avelina did and allowed herself a sheepish smile. "...Well, maybe some idea."

Those smooth, deft healer's hands were already exploring J'lantaa's dusky skin, sliding beneath her smalls to cup her breasts, and Avelina's mouth pressed against J'lantaa's as she rolled her hips with a deliberate and tantalizing laziness to grind against one of her thighs. Eagerly the dragoon returned her ardor, her own hands drifting downwards, and her wife deepened their kiss with a low, trembling moan in the back of her throat.

Breakfast, she decided, could wait.

Chapter Text

He’s seen the centuries-old throne countless times, but never from this angle.

Even the mightiest of hunters can be humbled if enough power is brought to bear, and it is on his knees, divested of arms and armor alike, that Zenos yae Galvus is left to stare at the mosaic glass decorating the ascending steps for a seat of barbarian kings. How many endless days and nights, he muses, has he spent striding towards that selfsame chair with a bored and insouciant arrogance?

Going through the motions while his blood sings for a chase?

A sharp and ungentle tug on the lead attached to the heavy torc that braces his throat. Zenos rasps out a pained cough as he falls forward, allowing himself to be taken off his feet.

He manages to catch himself, bracing his weight on sword-callused palms before his head can strike stone. Cornflower-blue eyes study the interlocking geometric patterns of terracotta tiling, interspersed with filaments of his own hair, partially shielding his face from sight like a golden curtain.

The Garlean prince does not move when bid, and is rewarded with a punishment. Stone scrapes against his skin as he is dragged by his captors across the rough heat of the tiles, and he is forced to crawl up each narrow step and onto the dais, and when he lifts his gaze it is to see that he has been brought before her.

She lounges in the massive seat, her expression cool and neutral, the most beautiful apex predator he has ever seen.

He replays their last great duel in his mind’s eye, the memory as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. Shinryu’s aether merging with his own. His crash back to the Menagerie garden like a falling star arcing down into the atmosphere from its apogee– the last time he can remember feeling such pure and feral joy.

“Leave us,” she says. The lead goes slack as footsteps retreat. There is the sound of doors swinging open, and falling shut, and a cold silence as they are left alone at last. 

The so-called Warrior of Light, eikon-slayer, empress of beasts, looks down upon him as if both do not know that his proximity to the most powerful armies on this star hang upon his father’s weakest breath. “I am not so stupid as to think you did not allow yourself to be captured, much less in such a provocative fashion. What do you here, princeling?”

“I have come to negotiate.”

One of those delicate brows arches upwards. There is a rustle of silk as she stands, approaches, picks up the lead that was left to fall, and slowly pulls him forward by the slender, rattling chain. As if he is the conquered supplicant come to offer surrender, and she the legatus awaiting tribute.

The thought brings in its wake a burning excitement that rides down his spine and spears straight into his aching groin.

“And what, pray,” she murmurs, the husky softness of her voice making him twitch, “are your terms, Zenos yae Galvus?”

“You need have no worries for your associates. There is no sport to be had in crushing savages.” He grins, not a true smile but a manic rictus, a flash of bright white teeth, eyes glittering and feverish. Sweat and spittle drip from his chin. “Merely would I continue my hunt.”

“I see.”

He is reaching for her, wrapping his arms about her thighs, pulling her close until his cheek is pressed against the soft, plush expanse of skin between navel and mons. She humors him for the briefest of moments, and he feels the warm weight of her palm on the back of his head, running very lightly through his wheat-blond locks.

Then her hand tightens into a fist and hauls him upwards. Pain arcs down his neck and arms like lightning aether between metal rods, before she kisses him, not soft at all but angry and hot and punishing.

“If you would have your hunt,” she hisses against his mouth, “then prove the game worth my time.”

Chapter Text

They were shadows amongst shadows cast by the intermittent flicker of ceruleum flourescents, back to chest to wall, his slender but still much larger frame barricading her points of exit. Her heart threatened to hammer itself straight out of her ribcage. Indigo-blue eyes flickered from his face to the double pane of tempered glass by the door, the only thing separating them from the outer corridor. 

"Scaeva," she hissed, "if someone comes in here right now-"

"And what, precisely, are they going to do? Call the viceroy?"

She could muster naught in response save a choked attempt at a laugh. This small room - little more than a closet - was not what one would have called secured from prying eyes. It would take only a sidewise glance from some sentry, one bored and listless investigation to yield unexpected fruit. 

Still she hesitated, and at last a light and mocking sigh escaped his lips. 

"Very well, eikon-slayer; if you fear discovery so very much-"

The length of her robes were gathered in one deft hand and lifted, the finely woven fabric tossed with a calculated artlessness to expose her from the flaring curve of that nearby hip to the deceptively delicate taper of her ankle. Gooseflesh prickled where her skin met cold and sterile air. She inhaled sharply, heat and tension coiled tight in her - whether from anxiety or anticipation, she could not have said.

"-then we shall have to practice due caution. Quietly, and at my leisure." 

Calloused fingertips traced the smooth expanse of thigh where flesh met the border of stocking, and every last one of her mental faculties seemed to grind to a halt.

"How long will you last, I wonder," all of her damned focus was on those hands and the levin heat that now followed the pathways he'd traced, static arcing across an opened circuit, "before I break that composure for which you're so famous?"

Slipped nigh seamlessly beneath her smallclothes, his palms had found her hips and the softness of her thighs. They lingered for a moment, a light and appreciative caress, before sliding very gently over the soft and yielding expanse of her lower belly.

The utterance of his name was a plea, a frantic whimper that broke from her lips almost against her will and he let out his own breath in a sharp hiss to hear it: one he muffled in the golden curtain of her hair. His free hand parted those curls so that he could press his mouth against her nape and she bit back a tiny whimper when his teeth grazed her, her legs shifting restlessly, heat and aching coiling tight, gods- 

-and his thumb slipped downwards, traversing paths of velvet-soft skin and wiry gold curls, to find her already slick and oversensitive.

Her hips bucked and she leaned into the wall with a keening whine captured between teeth tightly clenched, cheek pressed against the cold steel wall. Her fingernails dragged across its smooth and polished surface, rendered useless. 

He wasn't unaffected in the slightest. She knew it; she could hear his excitement in the soft and uneven whisper of his breath as he touched her, feel it in the heat and heaviness pressing into the cleft of her buttocks with each rolling motion- but he made no move to take his own pleasure. He knew what he was about, knew what he wanted from her, and to that end he was methodical and measured and utterly relentless.

Everything she was had ceased to exist. Her power, her Blessing, her mission, all of it, gone. Her very heartbeat seemed to hang upon that easy and torturous rhythm traced between her legs until her own breaths shuddered harsh and ragged from her lungs.

Enfolded in the cradle of the arms that braced her, she writhed in blind desperation, trying to force him to increase his pace. She found her best efforts resisted. Heat and pressure ratcheted up by ilms over minutes that passed as moons, until all that mattered was pursuit of the release that hovered so frustratingly close, the release he wouldn't grant. 

Not until his lips traced the shell of her ear and lingered there, and she heard his command uttered in a voice thick and rough with lust, feral and rasping, "Beg me,"  and by then she had lost all care for her dignity.

So she did.

==

(a special thanks to the fine folks of the J&T discord who are the best enablers a girl could have really)

Chapter Text

There was a startled exclamation from the sparring yard, followed by a metallic crash as the young man’s rear end met the icy stones. The training blade had flown from his grasp in his surprise, his fellows hastily dodging out of the way as it flew through the air. 

The simple sword hit the ground with a loud clatter and drifted a good few fulms across the thin ice before coming to a slow halt on the edge of the yard, where it spun in lazy and useless circles. 

His opponent calmly crossed the yard, knelt to pick up the blade, then tossed it at his feet.

“You’ll not get past an aevis if you can’t break the guard of a conjurer.” She lifted the plain wooden cane she bore in one hand and shook the snow out of her hair with the other before tossing her locks over one shoulder. “Again, ser Knight!”

Grinning like a boy on Starlight morning, Haurchefant Greystone stood at the threshold of the keep entrance to watch the sparring as it continued apace, heedless of the snow blowing through the door to melt upon contact with the much warmer flagstones of the hall (though presently a less-than-gentle push from Corentiaux sent him out the door where it was immediately shut at his back) as he watched the Warrior of Light put his men through their paces. 

Many adventurers, highborn and lowborn alike, had made their way through the camp on their journeys elsewhere (and a handful into his bed every now and again, truth be told), but he was hard-pressed to remember the last time he had met someone like Aurelia Laskaris. He still remembered the day she had first swept through the door to his hall and into his life: snow clinging to tawny lashes and the silken fall of long honey-blonde waves, her sleek and athletic frame draped in traveling clothes wholly unsuited to the cold climate. 

She had learned her lessons well since then, and today she had come to Coerthas from Mor Dhona prepared for its eternal winter. Her cheeks were just as rosy from the cold air, her long golden hair with its shimmer of snow just as ethereal, and she seemed somehow even more radiant and lovely than she had that day she’d come knocking with Francel’s letter. Haurchefant smiled at the sound of her soft laugh ringing across the stones - neither haughty nor mocking, but one of genuine joy. 

It pleased him to know she was enjoying herself. Her laugh was a rare gift.

After perhaps another bell of watching his recruits dispatched rather neatly and quickly by a slip of a girl in conjurer’s robes, their drill leader had had enough of the secondhand embarrassment and called for his charges to come to attention. They did so, shamefaced and somewhat the worse for wear- though a few were openly grinning at the prospect of being able to brag that they’d crossed blades with the Warrior of Light.

Haurchefant sauntered into the training yard, clapping slowly, beaming at her as though she’d just pulled the sun from the sky to give him as a gift.

“Splendid,” he gushed as she turned to acknowledge him, that soft smile still on her face. “Absolutely splendid! I had no doubt you would emerge the victor. I appreciate your aid, my friend.”

“Not too much of a loss of face to have had their weaknesses exposed, I trust?”

“Not at all! Though I daresay old Auvreaux might be eating a touch of crow for a sennight or so.” He flashed her a bright, cheeky grin. “…What say you to a match with me, fair lady? Live blades; that is, my sword against your magicks. I would love to see what you have learned on your adventures since last we met.”

Her smile turned decidedly challenging. 

“First blood only, I pray you, Lord Haurchefant. I should hate to deprive Dragonhead of a fine and capable garrison commander.”

He laughed, knowing she would not truly harm him. “First blood, then.”

“And to the victor?”

“To the victor-” his own grin flashed feral, “a single favor of their choosing.”

Something unreadable passed across the deep blue field of her eyes and was gone as soon as it had come, but her smile hadn’t slipped.

“Very well. A favor of their choosing, then.” She braced her right foot to bear her weight on its heel and lifted her staff once more. “Have at you, my lord.”

He drew his sword and swept the straps of his shield about onto his left arm, the blade flashing in the cold and brittle sunlight. 

In an instant she was upon him, besetting his defenses with rock and wind and the sharp burn of holy light. Haurchefant loved to watch her fight; he would never have expected a conjurer to be so fierce, and yet she was, commanding the least spirits of the land’s elements to harry him. 

It was all the Elezen could do to mount a defense, at least until he was able to exploit the one weakness he knew most casters possessed: he broke her concentration. She was able to block his swipes easily, but the last salvo chipped a small splinter of wood from her cane, and upon his next strike he heard her curse and shake out her fingers. A thin line of crimson had welled in the space between the tip of her index finger and its nail bed.

“I yield, good ser knight,” Aurelia said, wincing. She immediately stuck the wounded finger in her mouth and added, her words slightly muffled: “You have officially drawn first blood. Rather an unseemly showing from me, I’m afraid.”

Haurchefant laughed. She drew the small bit of wood out from beneath her fingernail with her teeth and spat it into the snow along with a few droplets of blood.

“Seven hells,” the Garlean grumbled. “Brought low by a splinter of all things.” 

“I shan’t regale the hall with the tale of the Warrior of Light’s ignominious defeat at the hands of her own staff, I promise.”

She laughed again, grinning around the finger still in her mouth. “A most gracious concession, my lord. Thank you.”

“Although,” he said, still smiling, “I am owed my favor.”

He had drawn closer to her as he spoke and now they stood the barest few ilms apart, enough so that silver could have blended with gold did he wish to tilt his chin down just… a fraction. 

Just enough to kiss her, for example.

His crystalline gaze locked with hers, and without breaking line of sight he reached into his belt and produced from one of the pouches a rather rumpled and well-used handkerchief. It bore his initials and had the heraldry of House Fortemps emblazoned upon it in scarlet-threaded embroidery. 

Haurchefant kept it on his person at all times, and well he should have done: it was a small gift from his father when he’d earned his spurs. A token for your lady, Father had said, and yet he had kept it, never inclined to meet a lady to whom he would gift it, until now.

Before Aurelia could move he had gently enfolded her smarting hand in his, and had wrapped the cloth about her cold fingers.

“To staunch the wound, my friend,” he explained, his voice little more than a husky murmur.

The heat in her eyes took him aback. 

“….I had thought, my lord, that you wished for a favor of your choosing.” She took a soft, shaking breath. “As- as a prize for your victory.”

“My prize is your continued good health and well-being in all things, dear lady.” That was, in truth, the very least and most innocent of his hopes, though he dared not speak that desire aloud. “Truly, your friendship alone is enough fav-”

She had pulled her other glove from her hands with her teeth and was tracing the outline of his jaw with her fingers. The pearlescent third eye on her brow shimmered in the afternoon sun like light refracting upon snow crystals.

The Ishgardian stood very still, almost not daring to hope that one of his most closely guarded daydreams was… actually taking place. Those soft eyes, bright with interest, had not yet left his: calm and solemn and the most beautiful shade of indigo blue he had ever seen.

He didn’t want her to stop looking at him like that. Not now. Not ever.

She leaned towards him, closing the rest of the distance between them, and he felt the softest brush of her lips over his. When he did not move, she did it again. And again, and again, until the individual sensations ran together into a single caress, the heat of their breath mingling in visible clouds between them as she continued to kiss him.

Somewhere it occurred to him that perhaps he should stop her, make sure this was truly what she wanted. 

His hands found her shoulders (thankfully), then her cheeks, and he was able to pull her away enough to catch his breath. She, too, was breathing heavily, and he suspected the flush of her cheeks now had little to do with the chill in the air.

“My friend,” he managed, tucking a sheaf of gold somewhat clumsily behind her ear with a gloved finger. “I’m sorry, but are you quite sure that this is what you-”

He never finished the sentence. It was swallowed by a deeper and far more intimate press of that soft, warm mouth, coaxing his own open to receive her, and those strong and capable arms entwined about his neck-

-and by the Blessed Fury, Haurchefant Greystone thought, he had never been happier to win a sparring match on a technicality in his entire life.

Chapter Text

“Emet-Selch.”

She drew in a soft and shaking breath. 

“That, I think,” she said, “is not your name. You have another.”

White, and gold, and black. 

Aurelia stared at him, the planes of his face illuminated by the flowers’ phosphorescence, eyes caught on that single snowy forelock that always brushed over his brow, and wondered how she had not seen before. She had been too raw, she thought. Too raw, too angry, too exhausted to see aught past the facade he presented to her. His myriad barbs. His world-weary slouch. The cold and flat cadence of his drawled monologues.

He beheld her with lambent golden eyes like twin watchtowers: lighthouses in the dark of a roiling sea, casting water-light upon the path of her recall. 

“I wish,” her hand lifted, fell upon the fur-trimmed lapel of his coat, unnatural whiteness shimmering fitfully at the periphery of her vision as it had done without cease since her defeat of the lightwarden, “that I could remember it.”

One silk-gloved fist clenched at his side, and he released one of his long-suffering sighs. His expression did not change but some facet of his eyes had shifted. Some small glint of light that had not been there before, like sunlight slanting through a window at the barest hint of a lowered angle. Her fingers curled, fisting in his coat, and she tried to remember what breathing felt like. 

Suddenly she wished he would say something.

“The night that I… died, I-”

“I remember.” His voice, no longer its affected drawl but a soft and haunted velvet rasp. Fist unclenched. “I have never forgotten.”

“I meant what I said.”

“There is no saving me, hero,” he sneered. “Best you reserve your savior complex for these fragments you so dearly prefer.”

Aurelia’s eyes held his, dark blue against liquid gold.

Her hand remained where it was, pulling against his coat, knowing the gesture was meaningless. Did he wish to leave, she knew she could not stop him, knew he had only to snap his fingers and bend the laws of reality. He did not. “I want to remember,” she said simply. “To cast off whatever it is that keeps me from it.”

“Your memory is incomplete because you are incomplete. What would you have me do about it? Another story, perhaps?”

She almost released him, almost let him leave her standing there alone in the clearing. It would have been easy to turn her back on him and step away and leave him to his own devices: lost within the annals of whatever private torment he still harbored after all his countless years of existence. Ascian against Chosen. Villain against hero, light against darkness. Eternal adversaries. 

Instead, she reached out to him- ignored the silent plea to let him have his defenses. She cupped her palm along the curve of his jaw, a gentling and conciliatory touch. 

Emet-Selch stilled himself in a way that she recognized and understood all too well. Wary and wanting, ready to strike if the need arose to protect himself but desperate beneath his brittle and scornful veneer for even the smallest scrap of unguarded affection. One of his hands lifted to wrap about the fist in his furred coat and she thought he meant to tug it away, but he idly ran his thumb about her inner wrist: an echo of that feather-light line she had stroked along his cheekbone. 

Light and gold, wreathed in darkness. 

As he had ever been.

“No stories,” she said, very softly. “If you could show me-”

He whispered something. It was a name, she realized: one she didn’t recognize, but a name which resonated within some forgotten part of herself. The surprise of it distracted her from his movements; he had released her only to frame her cheeks with both hands, palms resting at her temples, long fingers threading through the golden strands of her hair. Warmth radiated through the silk, and his touch was careful, reverent. 

It stole the breath from her lungs almost as surely as the mouth that pressed carefully against hers in the next heartbeat: slow, soft, with a familiarity that shocked the senses.

Oh no, a small part of her cried out in alarm. Oh no, oh stop, you shouldn’t let him do this, you shouldn’t let him do this, you shouldn’t-

Emet-Selch’s kiss was terrifying. It made her feel weightless and unanchored, like that sensation of free-fall she’d had in the Rift- somehow obliterating her conscious self. She forgot she was the Warrior of Light, forgot he was an Ascian. Forgot they stood in the last gasping vestige of a dying world that he meant to destroy by fair means or foul. Forgot why she was in the First at all.

The farther time seemed to stretch onward, the softer his kisses became, the more reluctant she was to stop him. 

It was a death of sorts, administered through the most tender touch imaginable. 

With more effort than she would have dared admit to anyone, perhaps even herself, Aurelia broke their embrace and wrenched herself away from him. She stood with one hand pressed over Zenos’ scar, staring wide-eyed and shaken at some fixed point beyond his shoulder. 

Kiss-drunk, lips swollen and wet and stained a deep coral, she found herself unable to look him in the eyes. Another few minutes and Emet-Selch would have made of the azure flowers of Yx'Maja a lovers’ bed. Laid her down and laid her bare, unwrapped all that she was, small and frightened and lonely (and mortal), and then he would have made love to her until it broke them both. 

And she knew, at her core, that she would have let him, and she would have regretted it. She didn’t want this from him. His yearning was not hers to accept whether he laid it at her feet or not. 

It belonged to a woman who was long years in her grave. 

Her other hand still rested upon his lapel, and beneath it she felt the stiffening of his frame, at the realization that she had rejected him. Those bright eyes paled, shuttered once again like a door slamming shut in her face. 

“The others-”

“Ah, yes,” acid on his tongue as he crossed his arms, posture closed and defensive as ever, “I suppose you should be getting back to your entourage. Can’t have your friends thinking you’ve slipped your leash, now, can we?”

She said nothing. Though his expression was as icy and bored as ever, Emet-Selch could not hide his eyes from her, nor the truth that lay within them. She could see the helpless bitterness within the gold as his gaze tracked the shape of her face: the conflict between old hatred and desperate love, nurtured for untold years, entwined like ivy and oak, root and parasite. 

How fine the borderlands of those emotions, she thought: how easily one could cross a threshold betwixt one and the other. And now that she had opened the floodgate between them, there would be no shutting it. She could feel the tattered edges of Emet-Selch’s soul as surely as the Ascian must feel her own, and his unfettered emotions left her feeling scraped raw. Drained. Exhausted. She would avoid him, she knew, for weeks henceforth- as he would likewise avoid her. 

The moment had come, it had passed, and it had gone. It did not seem likely to return. She wasn’t certain whether to find that a disappointment or a relief.

Without a glance over her shoulder, Aurelia forced herself to quit the clearing. As he had said, the others would have marked her departure.

Chapter Text

She grinned. “Consider yourself forgiven, then.”

When his teeth nipped her collarbone hard enough she knew there’d be a visible mark the next morning it turned her laugh into a breathless and wanting thing.

“Thought you’d said I wasn’t deserving,” he murmured against her neck. She unfastened one of the buttons on his undershirt, and another, then slipped her hand beneath the loosened fabric and covered the terrain of bare shoulder and collarbone. Gooseflesh rippled to life beneath her fingers when she ran her nails very lightly along the column of his neck, and Nero muttered a soft oath between clenched teeth. 

“Well,” she said, worrying the last button of his undershirt open to continue her exploration, “you did ask me for a second chance, after all." 

The rhythm of rise and fall beneath her touch had become erratic, the quiet breaths near her ears audibly uneven. She traced lean ridges of muscle and bone and not a few old battle scars, fingertips trailing upwards through the wiry golden hairs that lightly furred his chest, then following the same path in reverse towards the indent of his navel. 

Her touch faltered when his fingers slipped under the waistband of her smalls to trace along her flanks in a light and feathery caress. Rather than move towards the apex of her thighs as she had expected, his palms stilled in place as though invisible hands had gripped his wrists, and Aurelia found herself subjected to a long and careful scrutiny that, as it stretched into silence, became something approaching uncomfortable.

"What’s the matter?” she murmured, brushing a stray curl out of his eyes. There was the sense of a pause before he withdrew his touch- only to move elsewhere. She took in a shallow and shaking whisper of breath when his palms settled instead over her bared breasts. “Nero, what-”

“If you’d prefer that we not…" 

He trailed off midsentence, the ball of one thumb rolling idly back and forth over her nipple in a small and almost absentminded stroke while he seemed to consider his next words. The warmth that stole through her limbs in its wake was not an unwelcome distraction precisely, though it did make the wait to hear him out somewhat taxing.

She kept her own breathing measured and focused her attention on his face. The expression he wore reminded her very much of their conversation back at the Reach after Zenos’ attack: that selfsame uncertainty, lurking like a shadow of doubt beneath his desire. 

"You should know that this was not my intent when I sought you out,” he said finally. “I meant to share a bottle of wine and conversation. Naught else.”

… A rare sight indeed, to see a man like Nero Scaeva at a loss for words. Aurelia supposed she couldn’t really fault him for his concern, all things considered- although at this precise moment in time she wasn’t certain she would have cared even if he had stolen that bottle of Viandja and joined her with ulterior motives in mind. 

She twined her arms about his neck and arched her back to grind herself against him, hard and slow. Her arousal had become a nagging ache, an itch she couldn’t scratch, and she felt as much as heard the catch in his throat.

“Of course it wasn’t your intent,” said the Warrior of Light. “It’s mine. I’m seducing you.”

The worried crease smoothed from his brow and the smile that replaced it made everything below her waist clench - whether in alarm or anticipation, she could not have said at that moment. “Are you?"  

There was something in the way Nero said those two words that made her skin prickle in warning, but she forged onward. 

Full speed ahead, damn the consequences. She wanted what she wanted.

"I am. And it occurs to me,” her palms flattened against his tensed stomach and slid beneath the waistband of the breeches and smalls he still wore, “that you are still wearing far too much clothing to properly participate in this endeavor.”

She ran her hand slowly down the hot and rigid length of him, felt the wet at his tip, felt the twitch of his shaft beneath her palm. The sound that came out of his mouth when she touched him made that momentary boldness more than worth it. 

It was also the only warning she received before she found herself tumbled onto her back and pinned against the ground beneath his larger frame, breath stolen in a fierce kiss. In a single swift movement her (quite damp) smalls were at her knees, then her ankles. As she kicked them away she watched him impatiently yank his undershirt over his back, then work himself out of his loosened breeches to toss after her discarded underthings. 

He returned to her in short order: warm sweat-dampened skin and heavy breathing, lean muscle and wiry angles point to point against her own softness. His hands found her hips, slid over her thighs, and when they cupped her knees her legs parted like water. His mouth claimed hers, soft and coaxing; at the same time she felt one finger at her entrance, then two, sliding home with unfailing precision. She sighed and let her weight fall gently into the grass as her hips twitched upwards to rock against his hand, and registered in a distant sort of way the small and helpless whimpers that escaped her lips.  

Twelve above-

Her back arched in her efforts to meet those shallow thrusts- and it wasn’t enough. The digits that pistoned inside her, the heel of his palm buttressed up against her core to stoke the fire in her veins with each rocking motion- it somehow only served to fan the flames. 

She needed more.

“Please,” she panted. His lips stretched into a slow and delighted smirk. 

“Please what?”

“You know what.”

“Hm. Do I? I’m afraid I find myself at a loss. Enlighten me, pray,” he drawled against her gasping mouth, slowing the movements of his fingers inside her to a teasing pace best described as torturous, “o seductress mine.”

Almost in an instant, the breadth of her focus reduced itself to naught save that frantic corona of intensity he’d created with his touch. She could have screamed aloud, for she was well aware he knew what he was about, and he had to be in a similar state: she could feel his cock, fully erect, pulsing against the soft skin of her inner thighs. Could hear the uneven and ragged cadence of his breathing, see the deep rosy flush of his skin. She knew exactly how badly he wanted her. 

But she realized now that, unwittingly, she had challenged Nero to a contest of wills: one he was determined to win. 

Of all the times for his godsdamned competitive streak to manifest-

“Nero, for the love of the Twelve-" 

"Invoking false gods, sweetling? Goodness, whatever will the neighbors think?”

“Sod the bleeding neighbors and fuck me,” her legs flexed about his waist, “you insufferable thrice-damned bastard-”

“I shall have you know I was quite legitimate,” Nero began, but whatever else he had been about to add trailed off into a groan and the rhythm of the hand between her legs faltered when her hand found purchase about his shaft, a gesture she had intended to distract.

His fingers slipped from her entirely as she continued to touch and tease, only for his hand to close about hers - wrapped around him as it still was - and guide downwards until he had settled at her entrance and she found herself staring into his eyes, feeling suddenly quite exposed. That blue gaze was bright and intense, the irises of his eyes putting her in mind of a midday winter sky. 

She wanted him to take her, gods, she wanted to feel him inside her worse than she thought she had ever wanted anything in her life. When he did move she nearly forgot to breathe; she was so slick he had merely to adjust the angle of his entry and already- 

Aurelia inhaled, breath shallow and trembling, waiting for him to finish that thrust, to ease his way into her, to bottom out- and he didn’t. Upon his withdrawal he teased at her entrance, lazily rocking his hips to grind against her - leaving her empty and twitching, the promise of relief well and truly withheld. She felt every ilm of him from tip to base with each movement he made. If his intent was to remind her she was at his mercy, he had succeeded.

Her renewed frustration manifested itself in an angry growl. 

“Godsdamn it, Scaeva!”

“You,” he breathed against her lips, “did not yield.”

“What?”

“Yield and you’ll get what you want." 

He was smirking. Smug shite, he knew he’d won. "Oh for the love of-”

“Those are my terms, eikon-slayer. The choice is yours.” The head of his cock, heavy and wet, teased at her before he withdrew again. Up, back down again only to linger in that hollow before repeating the same maddening motion, awaiting her response. “Do you yield?”

“I-”

“Do you yield?” he repeated. The patient tone of those words belied the heat that lingered in his gaze. He was near his limit- and she was well past hers. 

“Seven hells,"  her breath stuttered in her lungs with helpless surrender, fingers snarling in handfuls of summer-dry earth and overgrown grass and wild lavender, “yes, I yi-”

With one flex of powerful hips, he surged forward and hilted himself. Aurelia cried out, the thread of that plea lost in heat and pressure and pleasure. Any other time that thrust might have been painful but there was the slightest breath of a burn and that was all; she was far too wet for aught else. 

His mouth met hers in a light and absurdly chaste kiss, one she returned with an eagerness that almost embarrassed her, fingers digging into his shoulders. She waited, bemused, as he lifted his mouth away from hers to kiss the tip of her nose, then each eyelid, then the spot just below her third eye. She wasn’t sure what to make of his brief tenderness and her mind was too lust-addled to ponder it beyond surface speculation. He canted his hips forward, pressing his hands against the backs of her legs to better align himself, and as he did she felt the adjustment of his angle within. She groaned and her thighs trembled under his touch but she didn’t protest. 

“Alright?” he murmured. There was just a hint of an edge to his voice, a lust-riddled roughness that sent a small thrill down her spine. She responded by flexing to clench hard around the fullness inside her and watched something very much like pain twist his features. “Aurelia-”

“I’m fine,” she whispered. She’d got what she wanted: his utterance of her name, the closest to a plea she knew he’d grant- at least for now. Releasing her tight grip on the grass, she touched his flushed cheek, damp with sweat, and gently tucked a stray lock of his mussed hair behind one ear. “Go on.”

Nero tilted his chin just so to bestow a kiss upon her palm. The stubble along his jaw scratched and tickled against her fingertips. He was smiling down at her, a strange sort of smile she wasn’t entirely certain how to take.

Then he started to move, in measured, firm thrusts that left her breathless, unable to do aught but moan. He had her pinned so securely in place that she could get no leverage unless it was to arch her back to grind into him each time his hips pressed against hers. The slide and the friction, the way he filled her over and over, left her mindless and uncaring of anyone that might chance to walk past the gate and see them, and the sounds of celebration faded into background static. 

She was drowning in pleasure, surrounded by the harsh gasps his movements wrenched from her throat and the soft sounds he made in her ear each time he buried himself inside her. His lips traced heated lines along her jaw, her throat, her ears. For those few blessed minutes, Ala Mhigo might as well have not existed. Eorzea barely mattered. Aurelia buried her face in his neck, tried to resist the urge to sink her teeth into the sensitive flesh at the juncture of his collarbone. She could feel her hand gathering at the curls on his nape, tugging at them with each of his movements, his breathing hot and ragged and-   

“Close,” she barely managed the word, half-sobbed it between gasps. She felt the telltale surge of heat and the spark of sensitivity at her core and knew it for what it was, pressure building towards release. Her ankles locked about his hips, and there was the warmth of his hand resting on her belly, just below her navel, then- “Gods, Nero, right there-”

The insistent roll of his thumb over her coupled with the deep angle of his thrusts was enough to send her over, and this time she did bite, her teeth clamping down hard on muscle and flesh to muffle her cry. He let out a sharp and startled hiss and flinched beneath her mouth, but it didn’t hurt him enough to keep him from riding out her climax. She clung to him as he kept moving, fucking her hard and fast now, chasing his own release now that he’d seen to hers: thrusts segueing into something arrhythmic and swift and shallow, punctuated by his gasping in her ear. 

She whispered to him in her turn, soft nonsense murmurs with her fingers still braced in a handful of sweat-damp blond curls, relishing his gradual loss of control and the tremor in his voice and the increasing desperation in the roll of his hips as he took his pleasure. After a few moments and a final thrust so brutal she knew they’d both bruise he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck with a deep and wrenching groan. 

He exhaled, his breath warm against her neck, and his weight relaxed carefully into the cradle of her hips - but his thumb did not stop its movements between her legs, and it was a matter of moments before she found herself flying again with a low and shaking moan. The intense radiating warmth of that second climax was much slower and sweeter with skilled fingers coaxing it from her, prolonging it until she could no longer bear even the gentlest of caresses and had to gasp in his ear for him to stop. 

They lay in close silence, their ragged breathing the only sound between them. 

Aurelia let her cheek rest against his and lost herself in afterglow, not yet willing to speak. There was the hammering of her heart in her ears and everything else below, wet heat and fullness and the lingering memory of acute pleasure; her veins felt as if they had been emptied of blood and filled with warm honey. 

Nero muttered something she didn’t catch, his lips dragging against her skin. 

“Hm?”

“Need up.”

“What?” She blinked. Her fingers were still idly drifting through the curls at his nape, still petting him. “Did I do someth-”

“No, nothing you’ve done. Just a leg cramp.” His soft sigh chuffed into her hair, the breath as warm as the rest of him, and then a rumble in her ear before he kissed it: “My blasted ankle’s gone numb." 

Aurelia laughed.

With a soft grunt he shifted his weight and rolled carefully onto his back. The slick emptiness left behind made her wince, as did the dull and slightly burning ache that now followed, the incipient soreness that came of a vigorous coupling after long celibacy.

Tilting her chin to one side, she studied him, or what she could see of him in the dim light. He had roused himself to a half-sitting position and massaged his calf with a pained grimace, but once he felt her gaze upon him he returned it with a smile and flexed his leg a few times before returning to the ground beside her.

"You are a vision,” he murmured. 

“Covered in sweat? Aye, I imagine so.”

That earned her one of his saucy little grins before he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her fully into his embrace.  

She laid her head against Nero’s still-heaving chest. His heart was pounding away, a strong and steady thumping beneath her ear, and she found the warmth of his hand on her shoulder comforting. After a moment or two his fingers drifted into her hair and tugged sweaty tangles of honey blonde away from her nape, and Aurelia let out a soft and contented sigh. 

Hells, she could fall asleep right here, just like this. And right now, sleep sounded so very tempting. Her eyes fell shut as she let herself drift, very much on the verge of dozing off in his arms. They’d have to dress and decide where to go and what to do next, she knew that. The others were going to come looking for her eventually. 

But oh, what a wonder it was: basking in the echo of a wholly mortal rapture with no interruptions forthcoming and not a care in the world. She had needed exactly this, whether Nero had planned it or not. 

Meanwhile, the engineer had found the sore spot on his neck where she’d bitten him. He was rubbing tentatively at it, wincing. 

“Really, sweetling, I’m aware that I’m quite the tumble-”

“And as self-deprecating as ever, I see.”

“-but you didn’t have to be this rough. That’s going to leave a mark for days. Are you certain you’re not actually half-baras?”

Aurelia opened her eyes, scoffed, and swatted lightly at the thick curls on his head, wet and tousled and-

“…is that grass in your hair?”

“We did just swive in your old backyard. I should think the stray bit of nature in one’s locks would be part and parcel. Speaking of which…” He reached over and plucked a blade of ryegrass from a tangle it had found behind her ear. “You appear to have picked up a few hangers-on yourself.”

“What on- ah shite, Scaeva,” she said, but there was no heat in it, not with the soft and helpless laugh that accompanied the epithet. “We look like we just rolled out of a haystack. The entire city’s going to know what we’ve been about.”

“Assuming they would care if they noticed at all. I’d wager most of Ala Mhigo’s likely got up to the same business tonight, so let them judge if they like.” One of those fluffy brows quirked upwards. “…Unless you’re having a touch of buyer’s remorse?”

“Hells no,” she said without a single hint of hesitation, and this time it was Nero’s turn to laugh. 

He started to help her pluck the stray pieces of grass from her hair as she did the same for him. She couldn’t help but giggle at some of the stranger places where the blades had stuck to skin, and he was chuckling softly in his turn. As time passed the grass-plucking turned to much softer touches, which turned back into kissing, and finally, Aurelia found the willpower to tangle her fingers in his hair and drag his mouth away from her breasts.

“Stop,” she laughed, somewhat breathlessly. “Look, we’ve got to at least manage to get our clothes back on. Otherwise we’ll have to do this all over again in another quarter-bell.”

“I would say ‘there are worse ways to pass the time’ but this damned Gyr Abanian soil is hard as rock. Absolute murder on the knees.” Nero’s answering grin was appropriately devious, his teeth flashing in the moonlight. “What say you we procure a more comfortable - and private - venue?”

Aurelia perked up at this prospect.

“….One with a nice hot bath, I hope?” A good bath and a proper bed - not a sponge-down and a hard cot in a Resistance pavilion - sounded lovely.

“Naturally.” He reached for the bottle of Viandja, amazingly undisturbed for all that it had remained in such close proximity. “Finish off the rest of this wine while we’re at it?”

She found herself grinning back. “Naturally.”

Zenos yae Galvus had been wrong. She wasn’t anything like him, not really, whether she could match his strange strength on the battlefield or not. She wasn’t a savage predator to be hunted for his amusement, nor a pet to be kept, nor even a fearless automaton to play hero only to be shoved into a closet when it was inconvenient.

Not a beast nor a hero. Just a woman. Just herself. And she was immensely grateful to her friend for the reminder.

Chapter Text

Much like an apex predator catching a scent, he is able to sense the moment when living souls enter his city.

He finds himself ruminating over the flash of annoyance he feels upon the realization that the so-called Warrior of Darkness did not come alone. Nor has she yet degraded body and soul into the scourge of this shard’s remaining life. as he had bid her---- and what of it, he chides himself? What does it matter? There is no possible way the ruinous process can be reversed now; the Light has taken too strong a hold. She is the Lightwarden of the First Reflection whether she wishes it or not, and he does not doubt that she knows it regardless of what she might have said to her companions. One slip of her self-control is all it will take.

He has waited this long. A few hours more will make no discernible difference.

Thus Emet-Selch once again relegates himself to eternal watcher. He observes their conversation from his perch high above their notice, listens in silence as they resolve to explore Amaurot each to their own. Watches her embark upon a separate path from the others, her soul cracking at the seams with primordial Light, a blazing beacon to attract his notice.

He follows.

He dogs her footsteps as she treads slowly and carefully the streets he had made (just for her), as she listens to various constructs speak matter-of-factly about the oncoming doom that had destroyed them (truth, dredged from his memory for her benefit), as she stumbles towards one of the broad resting benches lining the main thoroughfare and stretches out upon it to sleep.

Left to his own devices, the Ascian finds his thoughts invariably drawn to long-past days. Once, before the guiding hand of his god had closed a great and invisible fist about his heart, he too had been just a man: well-meaning, idealistic, even gentle-natured-- or as much as the office would allow, in the grander scope of his portfolio. That same tender and sentimental heart, ill-suited to the survival of a world-ending cataclysm, had nearly undone him in the end, strained against its tempering for the sake of his flaws.

And yet, he knows he would make the same choices even were his soul his own.

For her sake has he driven entire worlds to their ruin. Were it the catalyst for his god to restore her to him, soul full and unsundered, he would destroy a hundred more.

His gaze remains fixed upon the dying woman clinging to her mortality by will alone.

She lies shivering in an uneasy doze, curled on her side upon one of the public benches lining the plaza walkway. Her hair, streaked white and colorless from the aether poisoning, scatters over stone and metal inlays like a fibrous curtain, lashes quivering against the pale expanse of calcifying skin. Her lips are slightly parted, breath slow and torturous.

Emet-Selch could delude himself this very second, if he so chose. He could seat himself next to her and shut his eyes and he could pretend that he holds in his arms her soul, her body, warmth tucked snugly into the angles of this vessel's lanky frame. It would be simplicity itself.

He created this city with a snap of his fingers upon a whim; what is an illusion to fool himself, if even for passing heartbeats?

He still remembers the sound of her breathing. That soft and regular whisper against the silk of her pillow in the apartment to which he was once such a frequent visitor, and then later, in their shared bed. The soft press of lips against his bared shoulder, diffuse light streaming through glass and metal artifice in ribbons.

The clasp of her hands in his, legs entwined, aether commingling, soul to soul, as he drank of her in other ways. 

Oh.

He remembers. 

If she were to open her eyes and see him, thus, then perhaps-

I cannot be mistaken. But----

Gloved fists still midair, then drop to clench at his sides, and Emet-Selch immediately redirects himself before he can waver, give in to that one weak and momentary impulse.

A flawed and sentimental heart, indeed. The Ascian's smile is as bitter as gall.

Pretense will not give him what he wants. For all his efforts, she neither remembers nor sees. She does not know him. As she is now, she does not even know herself and perhaps that is the worst of all. To look upon her soul, even as bright as it is, is to view the disjointed pieces of a destroyed painting. Fragments, caught within washed-out remnants of color.

And this one is still more like her than any of the others that have come before. He can only assume such a striking likeness to be attributable to her eight-times Rejoined soul. Thus, he tells himself, it must be normal. It should be expected. 

Even knowing this to be true Emet-Selch cannot, in most waking moments, stand the sight of her. It feels like an insult: this pitiful broken fragment, this facsimile, this crude imitation that cannot recognize its own diminished state. He hates her for the ways she reminds him of what he has lost, even as he cannot help but feel drawn to her for the same reasons.

So it goes, the resentment of millennia roiling unchecked within the depth of his own tainted soul, a black echo yawning across space and time. An ancient wound, left open only to fester.

But every now and again when Hydaelyn's Champion looks at him the Ascian swears he can see her looking back, watching him through eyes as deep and dark and fathomless as the still waters of a quarry. Perhaps it is no more than an echo in truth: a vestigial thread of self maintained even within the great aetheric morass of the lifestream- but he sees that flicker of recognition all the same, imagined or not.

Only for it to pass.

It must be you, but your eyes have become so empty--

As ever, the thought makes his heart ache---

And she is waking.

He does not yet want to be seen. There will be time enough for confrontation and recrimination later, when it is far too late for aught of the angry words they say to matter. 

When she has seen everything he wants her to see.

Resolute, he turns his back upon her mortal vessel’s reclining form and fades into the haze of shades and skyscrapers: an aimless wanderer once more, alone within a city of lost dreams.

Chapter Text

He hadn't actually meant any of that, she told herself later, in the dead of night, curled into her bedroll and unable to sleep.

Bawdy talk, so he'd phrased it. Just talk-- that was all it was. It wasn't as though she'd waltzed into Rammbroes' pavilion with the intention to provoke him. She hadn't known he was there, after all. 

The entire incident had been clearly calculated to put her off her guard and ruffle her feathers in much the same way he apparently enjoyed getting under Cid's skin. She'd got one up on him the last time they'd met (if crossing blades could really count as a meet-cute), and this was like as not some petty way of having his revenge.

It had been inconsequential, a non-incident in fact, and she needed to stop losing sleep over it immediately. 

Aurelia didn't know him well, but she thought she knew his type reasonably well enough. At the behest of their families she'd endured the attentions of several men of her own station who boasted an Academy pedigree back home. All of them cut from the same cloth as this man: arrogant, self-aggrandizing, and unduly impressed with the breadth of their own intellect. 

Some few of them had even been presented to her by her well-meaning aunt as potential suitors. Hells, the thought was enough to make her gag.

"Oh, to the seven-- buggering hells with him," she hissed vehemently, then smacked her pillow against her face when she realized she'd said it with rather more volume than she'd intended. 

Fortunately, the closest nearby soul was G'raha, and she'd learned in the past week that the Miqo'te was a heavy sleeper. She exhaled and rolled onto her back, then shut her eyes and sifted through her memories for a different and much happier scene. Anything that might lessen her agitation and allow her to get some sleep. 

In short order she had drifted into a doze and the memory became dream. No longer curled in a threadbare bedroll upon rock and crystallized sand, she lay basking in the comfort of sun-warmed grass with the soothing scent of lavender in her nose. A warm breeze stirred her hair and the fine crepe fabric of the soft and comfortable dress she wore, the hem tickling her leg with its fluttering. 

Over long moments the scope of the dream shifted, almost imperceptibly, in the hazy and oneiric way dreams so often did, and she knew without opening her eyes that she was no longer alone. She could sense the warmth of another body nearby, someone she knew. 

Aurelia had had this dream countless times before: her best friend from girlhood, alive and well, lazing next to her and watching clouds drift overhead. Despite everything, it was a dream that never failed to leave her feeling better when she had it.

She was already smiling as she shifted herself towards him in a lazy roll to one side. 

A warm hand caressed her cheek. She threaded her fingers through his hair to tug him in for a kiss-- and the moment he responded in kind, she realized this could not be Sazha. The soft, warm mouth upon hers was too full, his face was not clean-shaven but bristly with overgrowth, the nose too broad-bridged and prominent.

And also not a Miqo'te: when her fingers tugged ungently at soft, dense curls rather than the fine silky strands she remembered, her thumb traced the rounded shape of an earlobe at the crest of his jaw.

She kissed him anyway, and in turn, he devoured her.

She tore her mouth away from his to catch her breath and he continued his conquest down the column of her throat: biting and nipping in tandem with the descent of slim hands and dexterous fingers. He rucked the thin fabric of her dress to her waist, and when his fingers hooked with a deft surety into the laces of her smallclothes to loosen and expose, she felt only heady excitement. 

Her dream lover surged forward, slotting one powerful thigh between her legs. She found herself rolling smoothly onto her back to bear the weight of a body that was lean muscle and sharp angles. The muscles of her calves flexed to wrap about his waist for purchase. Nearly in the same instant, with the mercurial fluidity of time only possible in dreams, she felt within the sensation of fullness and friction: heat stretching and sliding into her own, made smooth and easy with desire. 

She moaned, a guttural noise that was almost a growl, the sound of it swallowed by her lover's mouth on hers as he found his rhythm. The heat of the sun seemed to warm her blood with each thrust; she could smell lavender and musk and cut grass, and the irregular sighs from his lips warmed the column of her throat. Those wonderful fingers tangled in her hair, the roughness of them catching in her locks, strands of sunshine rendered to spun gold. 

His lips caught her ear, dragging against that soft spot behind its shell as he rasped, "You know me."

She did. She tried to remember his name, tried and couldn't, not with all her focus bent upon primal need. Even as she racked her memory, she twined her arms around his neck and tugged on his hair so she could kiss him again. Teeth and tongue together grazed her lower lip. 

"Yes," she panted against his mouth.

Each breath became more labored, seeming to lodge in her chest. His warm hands trailed down her thighs; she clenched about him as she returned his kiss with a passion that was almost feral, hips canting hard enough into his that it should have hurt. All that mattered was that thread of tension she could feel coiling on itself and the blessed relief that lay within reach if she could just-

=

Aurelia sat bolt upright in the darkness, chest heaving and skin dewy with a layer of sweat, eyes wide as saucers and her lips still trembling with the syllables of a name. She felt sure she must have cried out, but if it had been heard there was no response. The campground remained quiet, even with the sound still echoing in her ears. 

She exhaled, a trembling whisper of sound, and let herself drop back to the hard and uncomfortable ground.

Well.

That... certainly just happened.

She'd ask herself why but he'd been on her mind as of late, she wasn't about to deny it. In her defense, Nero tol Scaeva had been on everyone's mind since the moment he set foot on the dig site (and it hadn't been so much 'set foot' as 'sauntered')--

And what did it matter, really? The occasional strange dream was to be expected, especially when under duress, and she had certainly been given plenty to worry about as of late. The Doman refugees, Alphinaud's new grand company, the move to Revenant's Toll, meeting Ser Aymeric, dealing with an unending stream of summonings-

...It was a stress-induced dream, she decided. That was all. Perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. Certainly nothing to lose sleep over.

Except she knew the moment she shut her eyes that she wasn't going to put it out of her mind, much less find any peace in sleep. Lying in the close and humid darkness of the tent she remembered the sharp pale blue of his eyes, bright with triumph, watching with avaricious ferocity as he took her apart. Gods, the way it had felt.

That hot and grinding ache lingered still, unwilling to let her go. He'd cursed her without laying a finger on her.

Damn it. 

She wet her lips with her tongue, staring at the peaked canvas above her head.

With a furtive glance at the closed tent flap she rucked her sleeping robes to her waist and lifted her hips just enough to wriggle her smalls down to mid-thigh. Slowly she ran her palm along the curve of one leg from the rolled waistband of her underclothes to the delicate flare of her hip and then inward, index and middle finger carefully encroaching between her legs with a light and questing touch that was almost embarrassed. 

But she had to do this quietly, she tried to tell herself, the harsh sound of her breathing alarmingly loud in her ears. If G'raha or Cid or Rammbroes (or worst of all without a shadow of a doubt, Nero) found her in this state-- 

Well, short of sinking into the ground of her own free will until the next Age rolled round, the consequences defied imagining. She'd be the Eorzeans' first Warrior of Light to perish from sheer mortification, that was all there was to it.

She’d been on the verge when she’d awakened; she could still feel the throbbing pulse of her heartbeat, everything between her legs still acutely sensitive. It was difficult enough merely to measure her pace but the hardest part was trying not to think at all- trying not to think about what she was doing or why so that she could concentrate only upon the sensation of her own fingers: not half as rough, smaller and more delicate, rubbing against slick flesh in slow and careful motions.

Slow and careful, rather, until neither of those things was enough to satiate. 

As her concentration slipped, so too did her resolve to remain silent. The pressure of her fingers increased, along with the speed and urgency of her rhythm and that ghostly and half-remembered thread of impending release quickly returned, built back to its boiling point. A soft keening welled from the back of her throat and buzzed through the lips she had clamped tightly shut; her back arched and her neck bowed, pressing the back of her head into the thin pillow of her bedroll. 

She bit the soft inner layer of her cheek hard enough to taste copper on her tongue. It hurt but the urge to cry out passed with it, briefly.

Her free hand slipped beneath the pillow in some last-ditch effort at self-preservation, tugged just enough of it free so that she could cover her mouth, muffle the sounds that wanted to escape. Teeth clenched, locked against and around a mouthful of linen and hemp, and her last cogent thought was the memory of that dream-voice whispering in her ear, goading her to say his name. She thought of flaxen curls snared about her fingers, the breathy sound that whistled from his lips as she tugged at them in a demand for his attention. The sensation of the muscles in his back shifting beneath her fingertips. The glorious frisson and friction of his cock, pistoning inside her-

That thought did it. 

The breath left her lungs in an explosive and half-choked gasp as that coiling tension snapped taut like a wire, heat from her release radiating out from her core into her limbs. She writhed atop her bedroll for an indeterminate amount of time, thighs twitching with small spasms, helpless to staunch the small flood that wet her fingers. 

After a handful of seconds the aftershocks began to pass, rolling like an undercurrent beneath the hectic slamming of her pulse. She lay quiescent in the darkness with damp strands of golden hair sticking to her neck and one hand still pressed between her legs, chest heaving and ears ringing.

Willing her breathing deep and regular, she carefully flexed her hand after a few moments more to shake out the ache of an incipient cramp. Beneath the giddy feeling of afterglow, she felt a mingled jumble of emotions that she tried to ignore. Guilt, mostly. Annoyance. And no small amount of confusion. 

Her eyes alighted upon her staff, laid neatly alongside her journals and backs. The faceted surface of a crystal caught what little light existed in the close space, glimmering feebly. 

"You could have at least had the courtesy to let me dream about someone I actually like," she whispered. She laughed, but there was precious little mirth in it. 

Aurelia sighed and rolled herself into a sitting position on still-wobbling limbs, reaching for something to pin back her hair, then rummaged in her bags for her canteen and a scrap of cloth for washing. If she was to pass a sleepless night, she might as well tidy herself.

Perhaps in the morning, she’d be able to look him in the eye.

Chapter Text

The die was cast now, for better or worse, and for a tense moment that seemed to stretch into infinity the villagers braced themselves for attack. Armed only with pitchforks and fury, all present were very aware that if the viceroy so chose he could have all of them cut down with a mere gesture. It would be as futile as all the others, just another peasant's revolt to end in abject failure and punishment for anyone and everyone associated with it. But the legatus only gazed at them, head tilting like a bird's as he looked upon the gathered mob, then the woman lying prone upon the crumbled paving stones, breathing heavily at his feet, her own weapon mere ilms out of reach.

A trembling hush fell over the ruined courtyard. 

He thrust the point of the sword into the ground with a dull thud, then braced his hefty paws about the helm and lifted it to reveal his face before tossing it into the hands of one of his men. Long, straight hair as honeyed blond as her own spilled over his breastplate with the same careless beauty she had seen in the Reach all those weeks past, and Aurelia found herself frozen, pinned in place beneath a deep ocean-blue gaze as bright and unrelenting as a castrum searchlight. He was beautiful, she thought. And hollow. His were the eyes of a creature who had never known the depths of despair or the heights of joy. Merciless and single-minded, thinking of naught save its own endless hunger. 

That was the creature which came for her now: the fangs and claws of an apex predator wrapped in magitek and steel, the veneer of a "civilized" man so thin one had only to cast it away with one delicate pinch, like a scrap of silk, to reveal the monster beneath. Laid low by his hand she was once again powerless to stop him. 

The articulated finger-joints in his gauntlet curled about the hilt of his weapon as Zenos plucked it from its temporary sheath, as one might pluck a flower. He hauled her to her feet in one swift and efficient move. Blood and sweat trickled down her temple from her scalp wound and into the corner of her mouth; the unpleasant coppery tang of it a counterpoint to the battle-heat that still pulsed in her veins. Moonlight flashed across the flat of his drawn weapon with the motion, and Aurelia braced herself at the sight, fully expecting him to slide the katana's blade into her gut as he had done to countless others who had opposed him and met their defeat at his hands.

The strike never came. 

His gauntleted fist knotted in a handful of fabric and yanked her forward, closing the distance between them with such force she might have collapsed if not for his near-inhuman degree of control. And it was not steel that greeted her but a hot, soft mouth pressed against hers and a tongue flickering along the seam of her lips, exploring her in a slow and insolent way that bespoke the casual arrogance of his assumed supremacy. He paused with a slow, pleased sigh through his nose, her cheek suddenly awash with the moist heat of his breath, tasting her blood and reveling in the salty, metallic flavor it had left behind.

Her stomach turned with revulsion. She stiffened, every muscle as rigid as ice.

The kiss only lasted a fraction of a second, but that bare moment was more than enough for its intended effect. He grasped her chin between metal-clad fingers before she could recoil and tilted upwards so that she was forced to look at him. Black steel dug into the softness of her cheeks but she remained still and unflinching. She refused to show him fear, to let him see her quail from him even as her shoulder ached with the memory of their prior meeting.

He was smiling. His full mouth was faintly curved, his long kohl-darkened lashes narrowed in a self-satisfied squint. It was the way a sated tiger might smile, rejoicing in its victory, and Aurelia understood. He was releasing his prey only so that he might have the chance to hunt it again-- in whatever form that hunt might take.

"For the sake of the only joy left to me in this ephemeral world," he breathed in a voice meant for her ears and hers alone. The sapphire intensity of his stare sent sharp warning prickles across her skin. "Endure. Survive. Live."

The moment came, and it passed, and it was gone. He had turned his back and his guard was following amidst their tribune's barked orders to retreat. The triumphant shouts of the Domans echoed at her back as she watched the prince and his entourage go, too shocked to say or do anything to stop them. Weapon lying forgotten at her feet, she lifted her fingers to her mouth. She could still taste him on her lips.

She had not truly glimpsed the depths of Zenos yae Galvus' obsession until that moment.

Chapter Text

"I win," she said. Nero squirmed beneath her, making a sound that was something between a laugh and a whimper. She had him pinned in such a way that he could not easily get leverage, and for a woman half his size that was no mean feat. Her grin was both smug and triumphant as her legs, deceptively powerful, braced his lean hips, and the soft and breathless sound she made as she ground against him set every base urge he had alight. "Smalls, Scaeva."

"You're not," his hands grappled with hers as she reached for the buttons on his breeches, wrestling both playful and earnest, "exactly giving me the space to remove them."

"Then let me do it." 

"Not a chance in all hells, you little tease-" Teeth nipped along his neck, small bites as delicate as they were deliberate. His back arched of its own volition and a groan rattled in his chest when her lips pressed sweetly just along the rim of his third eye. "Aurelia."

She had mercy, then, and her mouth found his again, still chuffing with soft laughter; he caught that lavender spice he would forever associate with her, lingering in the sunlight skeins of her hair. 

The muscles in his belly twitched beneath the fingernails that scored lightly over his skin, just enough sharpness to set it to tingling. He canted his hips forward with a soft and guttural growl to grind against her, callused and finely scarred fingertips digging into her thighs. Aurelia's breaths came in small and truncated gasps as she hooked her fingers in the waistband of his smalls and-

...The chime of the linkpearl, bright and startling, prompted both of them to freeze in place. 

Their gazes darted from the tiny device flashing on the side table to each other: his expression one of thwarted exasperation, hers resigned annoyance. Whomever it was, they were obviously disinclined to wait for her earliest convenience. The sound went on and on until Nero finally broke the impasse with an explosive sigh. 

"One of these days I'm going to throw that misbegotten godsdamned thing into the deepest hole I can bloody well find. Whereupon I shall bury it."

"It can wait," the Warrior of Light panted. Her fingers dropped to the delicate ribbons at her hips, hastily working at the knots, "I'll check the message and call back later. It's fine-"

But Nero had already caught her wrists, chin tilting from side to side in negation.

"Just go on and answer it," he growled, annoyed beyond any ability to conceal it. His pulse was something he could feel from teeth to groin, his lust an aching and indignant throb that demanded attention. It took all of the patience he had not to make good on his threat. "They'll never give us a moment's peace if you don't."

Aurelia bit back a curse of her own and reached for the linkpearl. It vibrated with each chime, buzzing between her fingers. Beneath her, Nero buried his face in a nearby pillow before letting out a frustrated yell, one that coincided with a sudden and (she thought) extremely dramatic flop backward onto the mattress as she opened the connection. 

"Yes?" she said, a bit more brusquely than she had intended, but not willing to apologize for it. 

"Relia? That you, lass?" Cid's voice, decidedly sheepish. "...Sorry. I know it's a bit late."

She allowed herself a long internal sigh. Hells. She couldn't be mad at Cid. That was like kicking a particularly intelligent retriever hound, and he'd had no way of knowing what they were up to, after all.

"Is this a bad time?" he asked. Aurelia glanced down to see that Nero had not moved. He still lay on his back with his face half-buried in the pillows, one arm thrown over his eyes, lips parted and chest flushed. 

"...Not the most opportune, if I'm honest."

"I can call back in the morning if need be."

"Cid, if something's come up-" 

"Oh. Garlond. Naturally."

For a small mercy his complaint was muffled by the bed linens. She held a warning finger to her lips before turning her attention to the call. 

"...If something's come up just tell me." Suspecting she was in this for the long haul, Aurelia made to swing her leg over Nero's hips so she could move to the edge of the mattress but the hand on her thigh clamped down, pinning her with a strength shocking enough to break her concentration. She reached for his wrist and as she did, noted his face was no longer hidden. The mischievous glint in his eyes was more than enough to make her cautious, but she continued with the conversation. "It's not urgent, is it?"

"Not an emergency. ...I don't believe so, anyroad."

"Tell him to piss off."

"Pardon?" Cid's voice crackled in her ear. Wherever he was, the connection was bloody terrible- probably in his workshop. 

"What- oh," Aurelia shot Nero a pointed glare and firmly pressed her index and middle fingers against his lips for emphasis - be quiet! - only for the blasted man to immediately draw them into his mouth with an insolent smirk. She felt the unmistakable pull of lips and tongue suckling her fingertips, caught that very heated stare from hooded periwinkle-blue eyes, and was suddenly and immensely grateful Cid had no way of seeing the flush she knew had blossomed over her cheeks. "I-it's nothing. Go on."

"...Right. Anyway, it's Gaius."

"Already?" 

"He said he had intelligence to share with us," Cid said, at the exact moment she felt Nero's hands tugging the ribbons at her hips loose and finishing the work of freeing her from her smalls.

Aurelia dug her heels into his flanks and accomplished nothing except a soft, mocking little chuckle. The fingers of her left hand were still in his mouth - held with precise care between his teeth - and her other hand was occupied with the aetheric link, and she was sure he knew perfectly well there wasn't anything she could do to stop him.

Well, aside from a particularly ferocious scowl. Which she did give him, and that worked about as well as Aurelia had expected in that it didn't. At all. Nero only grinned at her around her own trapped fingers, bright and insincere and openly defiant. 

"Aurelia?"

"What?"

"Did you hear what I said?"

"Yes. Gaius has-" she managed to bite back her gasp as his thumb traced a path through wiry curls to slip into the cleft of her exposed folds. It distracted him, that tiny calculated risk, and she was able to tug her fingers free from his mouth to attempt a warning swipe. He deflected it easily, used his other hand to catch her wrist, and pressed a warm, damp little kiss to the center of her open palm and each of her fingertips. "...Gaius has intelligence. Um. To share."

"...Are you certain you're able to talk right now? You seem a bit distracted."

Teeth scraped gently against the soft skin of her inner wrist with the press of soft lips. His thumb set a slow and maddening circular rhythm against her core, just enough pressure to make her squirm in search of more. Aurelia took a deep and shuddering breath; it was quite clear Nero had no intention of relenting until she cut the call short.

She was going to have to take the excuse Cid had inadvertently provided and make something of it. 

"Wrangling," a certain former tribune was going to pay for this (and she knew he knew he was going to pay for this), "wrangling m-my um. My chocobo. I, ah- h-he's being- he's misbehaving. Right. Right now."

"Your chocobo?"

Cid's confusion was both palpable and more than loud enough to be heard beyond the linkpearl receiver. Lying beneath her weight with his hand still moving betwixt her thighs, Aurelia could feel the convulsive beginnings of one of Nero Scaeva's notorious laughing fits. It was a hoarse and whispery thing, and his face was turning red with the effort to suppress its full volume.

Damn it, this was going from bad to worse. 

"I... yes. My chocobo." She'd committed to the lie, as ridiculous as it was, and had no choice but to follow it to its equally ridiculous conclusion; she could only blame herself for that. And it shouldn't have been somehow even worse when Nero met her glare - face an almost alarming shade of scarlet, pale eyes watering with tears, full lips parted in silent mirth -- and mouthed chocobo! at her, but it was because now she was having to sit hard on the urge to laugh. 

Her palm connected with what felt like an arm and she heard a whispered ow! interspersed somewhere within those frantic, gasping chuckles. Gods damn it.

"I think I need to see to this and call you back, Cid. I'm sorry." Aurelia bit down on her lower lip. Oh gods please don't laugh, please don't laugh, please don't-- "He's being very naughty."

"Right." Now it was Cid's turn to sigh. "...Just tell your 'chocobo' to ring me when you two are done, will you? I can only stall Jessie for so long."

Nero's full-volume peal of howling laughter coincided with the click of the disconnected line in her ear.

Aurelia was glad she remembered to toss the device onto the side table before snatching up a nearby pillow and rounding on him. She waved it at him in an unspoken threat. Her lover made not even the most token effort to defend himself, instead continuing to clutch at his sides and cackle like a demented hyena. 

"Nero Scaeva," her voice rose in open exasperation, completely ruined by her own choked laughter, "I could strangle you-"

"Promises, promises," he gasped. Aurelia promptly introduced his smirk to her fistful of silk and lorikeet down.

Nero grunted in surprise but managed to shield himself from her next swinging attack. Upon her third attempt, he caught the pillow, tugged it out of her fingers, and leveraged his weight against hers until he had rolled her onto her back. She lay pinned against the mattress, his weight pressed into hers at the hip and legs entwined. 

"Now," he breathed, "where were we?"

He had, she realized, stopped laughing. The grin that lingered upon his still-rosy face was less mirthful than speculative, as if he contemplated a four-course meal and meant to decide which portion to taste first. His lips, ilms from hers, parted ever so slightly- and before he could speak again, she snarled her fingers in his hair and kissed him until they were both breathless once more.

Gaius would have to wait a bit longer. She was famished.

Chapter Text

"Your previous paramour simply happened to own one of these?"

Aurelia's hands still mid-buckle, chin tilting to one side as her full attention falls upon him, smooth leather straps hanging idle in her hands for a moment before she continues about her work.

"A most enthusiastic instructor, as it happens," she says. "Although I will confess it was only the once."

"Our playing field is even." Hair like spun gold spills over her shoulder and over the soft teardrop curve of one bare breast. A single errant curl catches for a brief moment upon its peak, drawn taut with her anticipation, its coral flush florid and inviting. He runs the tip of his tongue along his lower lip at the sight as if savoring its imagined flavor. "I've not indulged myself in some time."

"Oh?"

"One other before you." A question flickers within her eyes, no doubt a prelude to the investigation she will pursue later, with her customary attention to detail. "And as you can see, I am quite willing to refresh our collective memory."

Old battle scars shimmer faintly like a tiger's stripes beneath the wiry layer of flaxen hair upon his lean legs as they part to make way for her, inner thighs making sinuous paths where they slide against the hips they will brace in a few moments' time. The slow and meticulous press of her oil-slickened fingers at his entrance is an exquisitely pleasant distraction, the faint burn of her movements offset by a familiar fullness.

His neglected cock twitches eagerly against the mild slope just below his navel and he cannot quite stifle his faint groan when she withdraws her hand and leaves emptiness in her wake.

"I will need a moment," she warns.

"As you like. Only do take some care with me, sweetling, if you please." There is pressure now, glorious pressure, slick and solid and implacable at that point of ingress. Nero flashes a quick grin to let her know all is well. She has not, after all, caused him any discomfort which he did not expect. "I've seen how merciless you can be with your other mounts."

She tilts her head back to laugh at his jest.

The sight of her unrestrained mirth never fails to quicken his pulse: the exposed column of her throat, the toss of her sunlit hair, the delighted silver peal of sound that follows in its wake. In battle, she is graceful and deadly; in debate and in study, among the most impassioned and erudite of scholars, her mind in its own unique fashion as quick and facile as his own, or Garlond's, or her fellow Scions for that matter.

But this laugh is the secret she shares with him. It is his, and his alone, and it will never belong to anyone else on the star.

The knowledge burdens a hidden part of himself that has nothing to do with desire. It is part and parcel of a persistent and bothersome emotion he cannot quite name, lingering without an end in sight, like the full throb of an ancient hurt on a brisk winter morning.

Nero does not know what to do with it.

She is sinking into him.

Her hips press flush against his, and the world and all its cares and complications recede to the edges of his periphery, swallowed whole by instinct.