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Grown in more ways than one, then.
Alphinaud sits legs-folded on the end of the table, hands linked together at the front of a booted knee and head craned to gaze at the ornate murals of the Meyhane’s ceiling. He and Estinien sit in wait with Urianger, who, sat opposite to Estinien, has himself so deep in a tome the dragoon thinks he may have to drag him out of it by the scruff of his neck once their friends return from the Bazaar, and Thancred adjacent, who Estinien can tell grows more and more impatient as time passes by the growing rattle of his gloved fingertips against the wooden table. The four of them are peacefully quiet amidst the bustle of the dinery as the clock turns closer and closer to lunch, upon which Estinien’s stomach so eagerly awaits, and while he would oft feel guilty for not striking conversation now that he was amidst the worthwhile company of his newfound compatriots, it is this time, for once, whence he’s quite reserved to his thoughts.
Alphinaud, having grown over a summer and a month, as too had Alisaie, is at least half a fulm taller than the rest of them remember him, and though it has been a few days since their long awaited reunion, and the twins’ new stature and look was not quite the shock as it first was, even if some were still getting used to now looking up rather than down, Estinien himself hadn’t gotten all the way over all the ways in which Alphinaud had changed.
Sure, the lad was now just over his shoulder when they stood side-by-side, his hair styled and cut a slight differently so his plaited ponytail sat denser against his back and his bangs now curled prettily about his face—itself now bearing a slightly firmer brow and jaw and subtly plumper lips. But Estinien was more than glad that Alphinaud’s sagacious tone and demeanour now more suitably fit the face and frame that bore it, even if it now possessed a newfangled flair of ‘sass’, as Alisaie had put it, rather than it being crammed awkwardly into the stature of an Elezen youth like it had for so long.
It was instead what Estinien had not been anticipating, that Alphinaud would be in need of a new outfit to fit his new frame, that preoccupied him so about the boy’s growth into a veritable young man, born in something that was like to be an afterthought to someone who dressed habitually in a dragoon’s armor.
That was, a remarkably well-fitting pair of trousers.
Though, the more he looked, the more he suspected it wasn’t merely the deft work of a talented weaver that was so markedly luring to the eye. Sat so squarely at eye-level and in such a pose, the way Alphinaud’s back now curved gradually outwards as it met his hips rather than chasing downwards could certainly be no mere illusion of clever clothwork. Nor, glancing further downwards, where the small of his back fattened into something more, did Estinien think the trousers, likely an expensive and exquisite make, were designed to have the buttons so tightly skewed and strained to the flaps of their pockets whenever Alphinaud sat down.
And Estinien, typically stuck staring at a brick or counting the indentations in the jewellery across Urianger’s gown, now finds himself darting his eyes between the entrance, his accomplices beside him, and then back to Alphinaud like a mother bird guarding her newborn from predators.
Albeit, his eyes are kept much too long on the latter for him to be as near as attentive.
Gaze upon it long enough, and Estinien, much to his chagrin, finds memories coming to the fore that only makes his mind even more volatile. Memories of short-lived escapades in Ishgard with that same type of tableservant or passing drinkmate fermenting at the front of his mind. Nights with someone not unlike Alphinaud as he is now, a slender architecture and long legs, the signature, softly feminine touch only some Ishgardian men had that Estinien found himself inexplicably lured to moreso than anyone or anything else could proffer him in place.
And though he had many more memories of those men dressed benignly in their uniforms rather than without them until Estinien finally capitulated and left to find some rest, lucky enough to find himself in bed that night with his allure of the evening merely a hand’s count of times for his lacking capacity to court anything more than a chair, the few recollections Estinien that did have, kept close to his heart and deep in his mind, of a young Ishgardian beaut bent beneath him or curled atop him and all the noise and feeling that came along with it, now began to murk and blend about with what lay in front of him, and Estinien could help not but find himself drifting away to a heated fantasy where the men in his recollections undressed, sounded, looked, and what he could only imagine, felt like Alphinaud instead.
And Estinien has to stop and look away when the tightness in his breeches becomes more painful than pleasurable.
But the conjurance of Alphinaud’s bare arse doesn’t leave as easily as his gaze, and Estinien can only rub at his forehead and take a breath in hope to rub it away from his conscience, which was quite surely poisoned with all the things swimming around in it.
Soft at the first touch but firmer as flesh turned to muscle beneath. Slenderly curved and keeping with the breadth of his hips, a give and shake to it against pressure, a malleability when gripped. Creamy white like the rest of him.
Estinien can no longer tell whether he’s indulging or tormenting himself, but the heat in his gut keeps him going as he cups his face in his hand and attempts to appear merely tired and impatient to his accomplices rather than embroiled in a crisis of his own carnality for something like Alphinaud.
Was this punishment, this convenient turn of body and clothing? Had Halone finally taken favor against him for abandoning his post as Ishgard’s foremost protector, delivering it in such a lowly punch to the stomach as to remind him of his own fickleness, his own incapacity to muster enough respect for one of his closest comrades to forego listening instead to his cock?
Well, he thinks, if Halone had taken favor against him, then she was showing her fury well, and say, Estinien had indulged quite enough over the past few days in stolen glances and second-and-third-and-fourth looks at what Alphinaud was keeping in the back of his trousers for one of the Twelve to take notice. Eyeing him keenly enough, watching the young Elezen walk an incline was like watching a peach turn over in a bag, and the stairs leading from the Bazaar to the Meyhane was alll Estinien’s mind had needed to know for good how Alphinaud now climbed a set of stairs; and while he meant not to make excuses for himself, he can only think that watching the lad walk was, in the moment, a slight more mesmerizing than listening to his ramblings of trading barons and internal politics and the whatsoever of Radz-at-Han.
But mayhaps, had he taken a page out of Urianger’s book, Estinien would not be quite so far down this rabbit hole and not so bereft of a chance to climb his way out.
Yet, just as his thoughts curdle with a potent tonic of hormones, shame and panic, and Estinien ponders a not-so-distant future where he need fake his death or disappearance as an impetus to depart from the Scions and never lay his eyes upon Alphinaud or his arse ever again, an unrealistic prospect for the retreating yet still sane part of his mind given just how intertwined the Scions had become in the dragoon’s life, salvation sounds, distant but tangible, as their other half finally appears from the depths of the Bazaar and unto the Meyhane.
And when Thancred’s impatient groan of relief pulls Estinien from his spiral and his hands, the blood gathered in his gut and lowers rushes quickly through his chest and up to his head, and the relief of distraction washes his conscience clean as his eyes fall now upon Alisaie and the Warrior of Light and the rest of their proud cohort.
Something to lay his focus on that wouldn’t tug so at his strings.
But as Estinien looks all the way up, deigning to think maybe he had calmed himself and overcome his loins, his eyes meet Alphinaud’s, set keenly upon him, and those soft lips and pretty eyes give him a smile, sweet like honey and so very painfully well-timed, and when the young Elezen stands from the edge of the table and takes instead to conversation with his sister, his legs stretch and his back rises, and his trousers are pulled taut around the shapeliness of his arse and Estinien finds himself watching every moment of it as it rises and flexes and then settles back to its fabric cradle.
And Estinien can't help but indulge all over again.