InsaneJournal

Fic: "Spanish Bombs" (London Calling)
Title: Spanish Bombs
Series: London Calling (FFXII/P3 crossover)
Characters: Basch, Vossler, Fran, Balthier
Rating: NSFW
Length: 2050 words
A/N: Filling in some of the past for this 'verse. Follows A Rare Bright One for Belfast & Learning Curve.



He’s drinking sangria out of the mouth of the prettiest man he’s ever touched. The Andalucian sun has baked the terracotta tiles of the seaside patio to the kind of warmth that will stick with Basch even through the Irish winter. If, of course, they go back. He glances at Vossler, his long legs stretched beside the white-haired woman’s, his eyes half-lidded and his sweat a comfortable one. They have been talking in Spanish. Basch doesn’t understand a word of it, and he’s not certain he cares, because the man—Balthier—is kissing him now, red wine and the sweet-sour of orange on his tongue. The light’s fading, the color like the taste, and this little balcón is curtained off from the rest of the patrons for not an insignificant sum, but Spain has been good to them. Two grand fights in Barcelona, one in Toledo, a few less interesting here and there. Vossler’s car died in Madrid, but that was no matter. He has family, it seems, in every nook of Spain, and in the days between fights, when they are not traveling by bus or borrowed car, they’ve helped with things like patching roofs and moving furniture. And so they’ve eaten well, and this far away from everything, Basch hasn’t felt better. Not since he was sixteen or so, but that’s a lifetime ago, and now has more appeal than memory. Balthier’s shifting closer in his lap is only sweetness, and the past is anything but.

“Basch,” Vossler says, “we didn’t haul in enough for you to do that on the balcony.” Their room key hits him in the side of the head, because Balthier’s tongue finds the tender spot on his lower lip, where someone else’s knuckles left a bruise, the match in Toledo. The tip of his tongue barely touches, warm and wet, and he has to try a lot harder than he thought to make himself disentangle. Balthier’s mouth curves up at the corners, pleased with himself. Basch will give him that.

Balthier gets up slowly, slides his silver-ringed fingers into his leather trousers, makes the obvious adjustment in plain sight. The white-haired woman sniffs, and Balthier grins more.

“You staying here then?” Basch feels a bit the dog, slagging Vossler like this, but Vossler had an old girlfriend in Barcelona, and Basch slept in the car to give him some privacy, mostly for the woman’s sake, but it wasn’t much hardship, either, to do it. The backseat of the car on a street in Spain is a dozen times better than any bed in prison. And it’s not as though it looks like much hardship to spend the night next to this woman whose legs are as long as Vossler’s. And they look longer, one bronzed calf showing beneath the folds of her skirt where her sharp-heeled shoe rests on her other knee. Basch catches himself staring for a moment, but then Balthier’s hand is on his back, drifting down.

Vossler glances at the woman, who is topping up both of their glasses with shiraz, and he nods. “I think I’ll be all right.” His grin is lazy, and Basch bets that he will find Vossler just here in the morning, in the exact same position. He sits up a bit, though, grabs at Basch’s wrist, tugs him nearer for a moment, then slaps Basch’s arse, right over his wallet. “Watch yourself,” he says, and there’s no mistaking his meaning.

Basch steps back, knows his cheeks are reddening past the day’s heat and the wine. “Cunt. Don’t be that way.”

Vossler shrugs—Vossler never takes anything back—and Fran has the decorum to look amused, and Balthier only waves it off.

“There’s all manner of bad sorts about,” Balthier says. “No offense taken.” He grins, and Basch’s stomach tightens, the wine-warmed want refining, sharpening, then Balthier stretches, rests his elbow on Basch’s shoulder like they’ve known each other forever, and not for an hour. “I will, however, take offense if you’re one of those pretty blond things wot don’t finish what ‘e starts.” His accent goes broad and playful, the third Basch has heard him use tonight, and Basch has to laugh. The chameleon trick of Balthier’s voice is amusing, something Basch has never managed himself with any ease—he doesn’t want to change it, not like his brother was starting to, but he’s not thinking about his brother now—amusing and attractive because it’s a game, just a game to him, and Basch has missed fun so—

He slides his hand around Balthier’s waist, under the edge of his shirt, feels the sweat slick his fingers. “I’ll finish it twice, then, just to be sure then.” Balthier leans into him for a moment, then pulls away—the air on his hand is cool when Balthier steps through the curtain and away, and Basch follows.

They manage to get to Basch and Vossler’s room above the taverna, and the space is plain, the heat thick. Balthier sheds his linen shirt at the single window, looking out over the alley. They didn’t get a room facing the water—no sense wasting the extra money—but now Basch wishes they had. Balthier, though, lingers there like there’s something to see, and Basch stands behind him, winds his arm around Balthier’s waist again, takes the chance and puts his mouth on the back of Balthier’s neck. The skin is salted, and Balthier’s not objecting—Vossler doesn’t go for much foreplay, and that’s got its advantages, too, but there’s something about Balthier that begs for taste, for slower touch, and Basch thought he’d forgotten what it could be like. But he remembers now.

Balthier’s hands go to the windowframe, brace himself, and they shouldn’t do this facing the street. They shouldn’t, not even this much, but there’s no one there to see and there’s a tendril of breeze coming from somewhere, one that has threaded itself in from the sea. Basch licks, presses his lips together to push a small stream of air across the dampened place, and Balthier shivers, lifts one hand from the window and puts it on Basch’s thigh, slides it higher on the denim. His wrist is liquid in ways that startle, his fingers so light—Basch’s zip is undone and his jeans are peeling down his thighs before he even feels the air on his skin. Maybe it is too warm to feel, save that breeze, but it doesn’t matter, because Balthier turns, grinning wide, and Basch can see that he’s in love with his own charm. It’s there in the way the ringed fingers are still working, the teasing scrape of close-cut nails as he navigates the buttons on Basch’s shirt—loud print, borrowed from one of Vossler’s many cousins—and before Balthier has even removed his shoes, Basch is wholly naked, waiting.

This is an awkward moment, sometimes, between men. He and Vossler undress at the same time, or not at all—just move enough clothing out of the way—the way it was inside, in the mortared walls—but he won’t think about that now. He only watches Balthier looking, and he lets him—even that feels good, the knowing, sure smirk gone from his eyes for a moment, for a mere flash, but that’s enough. There’s something more under it, and there’s something else, too, when Balthier puts his hands on the zip of his pants, and his fingers stutter, just once, on the sweat-stuck leather. Basch reaches, puts his own hands over them, and says, “Let me.”

It isn’t easy to take them down, but the slowness lets Basch look, more closely, and they stay in front of the window because Balthier sighs—sweet and pure relief—when that breeze touches him again. The leather smell clings to him, the sweat thick with it, and Basch pushes his nose into the sharp-drawn muscle-curve of his groin. The hair there is trimmed close, groomed, so different from the dark thatch of Vossler. But this is all different from Vossler, that much Basch knows—something on the air, that fey little breath from the water—and he breathes deep, leaves soft sucking kisses on the inside of Balthier’s thighs, blows cool over them. Balthier shivers, clutches at Basch’s shoulders, and then he draws back, molds his hands into control and tugs Basch up.

His chin angles toward the bed. “Before we’re old men, hm?”

Basch has no interest in hurrying this, not now. He had wanted to, on the balcony downstairs, but now he doesn’t. So he makes his answer with his lips and tongue, tasting the edges of an accent he can’t place. None of the words feel at home on him, but Basch feels something like home settling in on his own mouth. He lets go of the school-pronunciation he’s been trying to use anywhere that isn’t the ring or alone with Vossler, lets his vowels open and his consonants soften. He would speak in his own tongue, but he wants to be understood now.

“I’ve the head start on you for that, but I’ve no want to rush past this.” Basch says it into the skin below Balthier’s ear, drags his teeth carefully against the silver twists there. He can feel Balthier’s jaw open—a protest? an insistence on hurry?—but there are no words, only an exhalation of languid sound. Balthier’s fingers twine in Basch’s hair, and there is no more talk of quickness.

* * *

Afterward, though, they return quickly to talk, and Basch is surprised. Pleased. Though first Balthier pulls away, gets up, goes to the window again, as though looking for something, and he picks up his trousers, he doesn’t bend to pull them on. He only smoothes the leather, drapes them over the single chair in the corner, and he glances over his shoulder at Basch—strange, when he could simply turn, Basch thinks. Balthier steps closer, and now Basch knows he is watched, watched and doesn’t know why. The moment stretches, but Basch smiles, something stilled and pooling and sweet in his bones.

“Come here,” Basch says. He takes a chance. “We’ve both been places.” So many, and for reasons, Basch is sure, that have to do with the way Balthier talks. That sound that doesn’t sound like anywhere. He knows what that feels like. But he won’t ask about that. He says, “Tell me about your favorite.”

Balthier flashes white teeth, runs his hand over Basch’s thigh. “Here’s a very good place I’ve been.”

Basch was afraid he might say that. He shakes his head, and he waits.

Balthier waits, too, but there comes a moment when it seems Balthier decides something—his hand leaves Basch’s thigh, but it skates over Basch’s knee, to his shin—a long thin scar there, when two boys like two shadows sneaked through the priory fence so late at night it was early—and down even over his foot to take up the rough blanket at the bed’s foot. He gathers it against the headboard, settles into the makeshift cushion, and he turns the silver rings on his fingers.

“Greece,” he says. “Fran taught me to ride there.” In time, his fingertips trace the winding roads above the coast across the muscle of Basch’s back, dipping over the broken-glass scars with such ease that Basch feels supple as olive branches, something he’s never seen.

* * *
In the morning, Basch wakes alone, his wallet is empty, and all four tires on Vossler’s borrowed car are flat. Vossler, somehow, is not angry with Basch, isn’t angry at all. Only shakes his head. The white-haired woman—Fran—is gone, too. Vossler is asking the loan of a pump when Basch’s fist comes down on the terracotta patio tile. He fights them out of Spain with one broken finger in his right hand, one he doesn’t tell Vossler about because there’s still two more fights that are already arranged, but Vossler knows that there is more wrong than Basch’s anger and silence, some deep thing he cannot name. In Cordoba, Basch spits the thick blood of a broken nose, and it is red and pulsing in the back of his throat, choking him, but with ice and pressure, the stream slows, dries, only aches dull.