loligiary | FFXIV Misc. Posts

Estinien is silent again, digesting the information. Then he gets up without prelude and leaves, heading across the camp to where Maxima's tent is.

The mage elf who haunts Gaius's footsteps gives a small snicker from his vantage point, and then goes back to watching the horizon.

Gaius holds the tent flap open for a moment, looking out from where he sits with his reports.

"Leave him be," he says quietly, not wanting Estinien to hear. Still, something needs to be said to Valdeaulin before it goes too far. "He's an ally, and has done you no wrongs. Have your justice if you wish, but you need not punish a man who has done nothing but help you."

"A man like that won't die just because I accused him of making bad sexual decisions." The mage rolls his eyes. "And he ought to know what will happen if he gets too close to you. He should hardly be ignorant, just because his nation was one of the few you didn't fuck."

Meanwhile, Estinien is seeking out Maxima, sticking his head in the man's tent and blunting asking for what texts he might have on biology.

"Comrades you agitate are comrades who hesitate to trust you when they need you," Gaius said, tone kept as mild as possible. "At least pretend you care about the fight and the mission and not simply tagging along to be my jailer."

Maxima, completely unawre of any of this, is sitting in his tent, hating every fucking thing about this. He was a soft civilian, who did his miltary service in a lab or behind a desk. this is not an easy time for him, but his expertise is needed to help with the systems protecting the Black Rose.

When there's movement at his tent flap, he looks up and says, "Hello?"

"Gaius requested I come and ask you about...a science question." Estinien wasn't making eye contact as he asked it. The man seemed fine enough, far too soft to really respect but there was a place for soft in this world. Probably should be more places for it, really.

"Particularly on the specifics of intercourse."

Maxma's brows do this thing where his eyebrows they go up and down his brow in various elevations, trying to experience five emotions at once. Gaius asked him to do what? This must be some sort of miscommunication. He knew there were sometimes language barriers or differences in concepts, but...

This couldn't be right.

"Can I ask... what specifics?" he said, amazed he can keep his own voice level.

"He said you would know. Are there texts, or can you simply give me a summary?" Estinien crossed his arms impatiently, glowering at the Garlean. It could not be too complicated, could it?

"They... lack comprehensive sex education in Ishgard?"

Maxima tries to be open-minded. He's and Athiest like most Garleans, and his view of eikons aligns with the national loathing for them. He thinks those are all reasonable positions to keep and that his nation is not wrong about those things. However, he is trying to not hear Gaius van Baelsar's voice in the back of his head: they really are savages!

How can they be so civilized and yet... fail in this basic function of all Mankind?

"Are you looking into the reproductive sense? The, uh-- safety of said acts? I -- this is a very board question, Ser, I'm sure you understand I needs must ask for more information before I can properly assist you."

Estinien gives him a flat look that Maxima is probably used to having by now, though not from such intimidating people. The look of 'I know you think I'm a barbarian, but could you get your three-eyed head out of your pureblood ass long enough to at least hold a conversation with me.' Maxima's received a warm enough welcome from the Eorzeans just based on how valuable he is, but they are all deeply aware of how Garleans perceive them.

"Information on the act between two men," Estinien says in low tones, each word digging in like a dagger. "So no, the reproductive aspect will not be relevant here. We do know how babies are made, even in Ishgard."

"Ah, excuse me that's -- hmm. Not among my documents," Maxima says, blanching under his pale skin. "Normally, in larger operations we'd have someone who'd -- see to that sort of material, but with such a small group of us, we do not have, ah, that sort of officer."

No porn fairy in this tiny sortie. They all have to look each other in the face every morning.

"You have an officer for this?" Lord. And here he'd been told the Garlean army was uptight, but they had an entire assignment just around male sex documentation. "I cannot imagine it is particularly complicated...but no matter. It is hardly important."

He took up his spear and ducked his head to leave the tent again.

"W--well not as s--" But there he went, and Maxima realized he'd given him the worst fucking advise ever.

What the fuck was going on, anyway?

Estinien, as he often was, went AWOL for the next few hours. The group would be used to having him just drop off the map and abruptly show up again at mealtimes like a stray dog, sometimes with fresh caught game or new intel but not always. This time Estinien was gone until long after sunset, until most of the camp was already asleep.

And then he was sliding his way into Gaius's tent, most of his armor off to allow quieter movement.

A wanted man sleeps light, so the golden flash of Heirsbane in his hand is the first signal that he is awake, the click of it's hammer that it's primed to fire. But he stays his hand as he realizes that this is not his enemy. Instead it's... well, they're not exactly friends.

"Do you have a deathwish, Wyrmblood?" he asks, tense and quiet. The hammer clicks back into place, and Gaius's finger eases off the trigger. Heirsbane finds its place among his things once more, next to his bed roll. "What're you doing here?"

The first question gets a small chuckle, a knowing smile, because Estinien has exactly zero interest in actually answering that question. The flash of the blade doesn't even seem to surprise him.

"Your man Maxima wasn't particularly useful," he says quietly, sitting at the tent opening. The butt of the lance is in his hand, its length trailing out of the tent, as if he can't bear to be without keeping it to hand. Gaius will understand. "Apparently we lack the officer in charge of such matters, having such a small party."

Gaius' brows lift and rise, barely due to the light glinting off the pearlescent third eye in his brow. But he sits up -- still wearing bandages across his ravished slowly healing left arm of his, strapping across his chest, and likely his smalls beneath the blankets. With so little on, he smells like medicinal herbs, gun oil and sweat.

Maxima failed to teach the man anything. Likely was bewildered. Eorzean didn't know how to approach anything, did he.

"So you come back to me for... what, practical instruction?" he asks, still bemused. By the Emperor (may he know peace, far from Zenos) he does not understand this particularly feral Eorzean.

The shadowed figure of Estinien tilts his head. He is silent for a time, mulling his words over. "If you have no interest, I will leave and not speak of this again. But If I am to learn any craft, I would learn it from someone more experienced rather than try to guess in the dark."

Gaius is equally silent in his contemplation, before he considers; he will lay abed with a savage, feel him surge and move, work to give him pleasure and teach him to take it, to make it, to enjoy it -- if such things can truly be taught. A savage. An aether-huffing Eorzean with the blood of dragons in his veins.

It's monstrous. Or it should be, to Gaius van Baelsar. But he is just Gaius Baelsar, lost and adrift, an so he answers: "If you lay with me, Gae Bolg lays with Heirsbane. Agree that we need no weapons here, and I will teach you."

Better him than someone who could use the naievete of the Azure Dragoon against him. Better him than Valdeaulin.

There is a part of Estinien that fears whether he is still a man. Whether Nidhogg's poison, even after its draining, has warped him body and mind beyond what any man of his race should be like. This is a thing that men do together, and that Estinien might have done had not vengeance and constant rage consumed his every daily thought.

It's so quiet in his mind these days, and he is never sure how to handle the new thoughts that come in to fill the void left when Nidhogg's rage departed.

Estinien pulls his lance in further and lays it beside Heirsbane as instructed, as if the weapons too are addressing their relationship. Then he sits back silently on his knees like a pupil, waiting for his next task. In the dim tent his eyes almost seem to flicker when they catch the light of the lamps outside.

"In an effort to be transparent," Gaius said, as he brings himself upright, "I will tell you that the senses we have are... different than your own. Our third eye functions to add layers to our sight, and that I will see more than you perhaps intend to give away."

Spatial awareness is one thing, but the ability to track movement, to see better in the dark with shapes registering even in the dim light.

"In view of forthrightness, I have rules: You will do as instructed in trust. However, if something is painful, or unenjoyable, or actively repulses you -- you will tell me, and we will stop and re-orient. While some seek pleasure in the lash or a boot on their neck, I have no desire to give you that at this time."

Later? Well, Gaius isn't sure there will be a second time, but if he seeks advanced teaching or repeat lessons.

"If all of these are acceptable to you, strip and we'll begin."

What a strange man, thinks Estinien. Painful? He can and has withstood more pain than this Gaius could possibly give with just his bare hands, and his constitution can easily override any disgust. (Estinien has never had a training where someone has told him 'it's all right to stop'. Such kindnesses were for not for a Dragoon.)

He cocks his head again as he listens, feigning an understanding even though he has little of one. Pleasure in the lash or the boot...what, like a flagellant? He had not even an average religious fervor, let alone that, but Gaius likely thought them all an equal batch of zealots. No matter.

He nods at the end, and begins silently removing his shirt, his eyes staying on Gaius.

Gaius -- in his smalls as suspected -- moves from his bedroll, and retrieves a few things. In the dark, he asks: "Do you know how you like to be touched? Or have you simply been held apart, all this time?"

It's sad; even Gaius has known the loving comfort of being in someone's arms, of kissing a lover good morning and good night, of carrying a lover's token with him on early deployments, before he rose through the ranks. Sure, they were secret and quiet, but it was still love, it still sparked passion. The Dragoon is a living weapon and that...

...That's something Gaius has always tried to avoid making his people into. Yes, soldiers serve and die, but they still have lives and families, if they are lucky.

"Does it matter?" Estinien snaps back. All right, so he's a little hostile about it. The embarrassment of his inexperience combined with his confusion at anyone asking him what he likes leaves him wrong-footed and a bit flustered. He'd expected a man like Gaius, a man used to efficiency and conquest, to just...throw him down and show him by example. Being asked, rather than shown, makes him uncomfortable.

Azure Dragoons know they will never have families, and their lives will not be long. If you are the type to become Dragoon, you are the type who finds that fact a comfort.

"Yes," Gaius says, as he scoots himself closer. "So your first lesson will be to learn to take pleasure, not give it."

It's going to be a hard lesson to learn, to take and accept instead of surrender to overwhelming force. Gaius has no desire to do that to someone who has already known so much pain and conflict.

"We will start slow-- I will touch you. But slowly. No immediate sexual touch. Just finding your tolerance for skin on skin. The rules apply."

And that's when he finally touches Estinien-- with an ungloved hand, calloused fingertips sliding over the wrist in a slow motion.

"I'm not some delicate maiden, Black Wolf," Estinien grumbles. He lets his hand be touched, the rest of his body keeping idle and waiting for direction. "I have tolerated much, in my time, and I cannot fathom this being some agony beyond my ability."

His fingers extend as his wrist is touched, but he otherwise makes no movement.

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