#ffxiv vhox tia

[idealistsinc]

7 // speculate

v. to engage in conjectural thought wc: 461

“Only the flames of animosity may temper a warrior’s soul.”

What the bloody hell does that mean? thinks Rin.

Today, the Coral Tower again: lavish in sandstone, a staggering monument to Limsa Lominsa’s maritime might. The man Rin spoke to this time was called Broken Mountain. He struck a prodigious presence, corded muscle and barreled chest, a beard bursting from his chin like a lava plume. In the distant arena, axes clanged in shivering, silver harmony. 

“Tell me about the inner beast.”

Rin leans back in his chair and stares at the mesh of his own handwriting until the inkstrokes blur. Darkness presses against the windowpane. He takes a drag of stone-cold coffee and pretends his injured arm doesn’t smart. Like reviewing for an examination, he tells himself. Again from the top:

The inner beast is the warrior’s seat of his strength, volatile, dangerous, incredible. A warrior triggers his inner beast when he surpasses a physical or mental limit and tempers it when he directs his energies toward the safety of his allies. But should the warrior steel his resolve with anger, should the monster slip its leash, then…

“...he loses himself. As I did, once.”

Again, Rin saw the flash of teeth, the stretch of lips in a snarl, eyes black and animal and blank—saw Vhox’s knees buckle, spilling him into the pool of Razhe’s blood. “How did you come back?”

“My brother hit me with an axe.”

Rin’s hands tremble around his notes. He puts them down on the desk, presses his palms to his eyes, and tries to control the panic-sharp spasm in his lungs. 

The book-smell of his father’s office, barricaded behind that behemoth of a desk while Senan weathers Isha’a’s storm: “You aren’t a hero. You’ll be in over your head. Who’s going to rescue you when you start to drown?”

Or the stench of ichor thick in Rin’s throat, spidery fingers barely grazing his skin as she bandaged his arm: “We’re blessed by our Goddess—and our Goddess’s wrath is to be feared. You don’t understand him at all.”

Or the thing inside him, the thought like a cold hand on the small of his back, waiting for permission to push him through the last hand’s-breadth of space before the fall: “You’re going to fail, Rin.”

Maybe he will. But he remembers the light sparking off stone, the fish-scale glimmer of the sea, the salt-stink of inn rooms and stiff sheets and sweet ale and...him. For all he says he belongs, he’ll wither there in that barren wasteland of a desert like a plant deprived of sun. Vhox Tia has never been the kind of force a person can contain.

“Fuck you,” Rin says to the world at large, picks up his notes, and begins again.

vhox belongs to @mimiorzea

[mimiorzea]

XXII: Argy-bargy

If there was something Vhox had learned in his twenty or some odd years, it was this:

the people in his life didn't come back.

The lesson took him a while to learn -- he wasn't always a 'quick on the uptake' sorta lad. But when your own mum couldn't be arsed to come back to feed you or pay rent for the musty room she left you in a few days shy of your fifth summer, and you got kicked out by the smarmy landlord some weeks later with little more than a sympathetic pat and a lukewarm egg salad sandwich (for which Vhox could still credit his lifelong intolerance of egg salad -- it wasn't even good, and he probably woulda spewed it over the edge of the lower decks had he not been starving)... well. You'd have to be some special kind of dense to think anyone else out there was gonna put up with your shite, either.

Such an assessment might not have been exactly fair, because Vhox himself was, at times, responsible for kicking old mates to the curb. He did it with a bit less courtesy than he'd been afforded by one Sharlayan Mooncat, too; would up and vanish to another haunt somewhere on the li'l smack of land they called Vylbrand, or find himself picking drunken fights until one of 'em finally had the nerve to break things off. One fellow in the crew that raised him even went so far as to send him letters, moping about the good ol' days before Vhox put his fist through Toffwyb's chest. Bloody sap, he was. Vhox spent days reading that letter, considering what it might be like to go back, to mend a few in the sea of bridges he'd torched, and even scavenged a pen to try to write out a reply -- but when he imagined facing the rest of the crew, the things they might say and the things he might come back awares to find that he'd done, he tossed the letter out with the rubbish and didn't once look back. Didn't read another damned one, deciding they better served being rolled up and smoked with the fogweed, as if the inherent disrespect of doing so might convey his disdain for the mere idea that he would ever go back, and better loosen that awful knot of indigestion he got any time he thought about what would happen to ol' Ortolf if Vhox lost control again.

There was a comfort in moving on, he would say. Always feeling his way forward, spending his days with a lot of fresh faces who didn't know a lick about him other than he was a decent lay and could bull's eye an apple right off the top of a brave sod's head with a knife even after putting back three pints of ale. No one expected anything from him -- and when things changed and people moved on, as they always did, there was ever a new batch of faces to replace the old, pissing his life away in the comfort of warm shallows for fear of all the things that could drag him under in the deep.

And Rin -- well, Vhox would have wagered his thumb that Rin was the same way, if not for that swivin' yellow-bellied shitestain Razhe kicking him into the clearing before every godsdamn member of the tribe during the mornin' group wank over Her Majesty Azeyma.

"Here you are: Vhox's k'tashlum* lover, the proof of his sins against our Goddess."

. . .

"You bloody--"

Rin did not finish that statement, though Vhox could imagine any number of words he could have used to fill it. Under more favorable circumstances, he might have offered them. But as it was, he was too dumbstruck by the man's presence in this dingy cave somewhere out in bumfuck nowhere, Gyr Abania, and the lilt of a plummy Sharlayan accent that he should not have missed as much as he did.

"Why didn't you play along? Still saving all that wit for persuading your way into banquet receptions and warm beds, is that it?"

"Play along with--" Vhox had to mentally backtrack to their encounter in the clearing, only to find that it kicked up a whole new wash of rage. His ears still thrummed with the chorus of angry voices that came in the wake of Razhe's announcement, furious rebukes and demands of retribution, a whole-arse argy-bargy (and for what? Suckin' a cock? Vhox would be on trial for days) -- in the midst of which sat Rin, verbally flogging himself like he was the most measly and groveling son of a bitch to ever waste air.

"You expected me to agree with that hot load of bullshite? Gods, Rin -- if it had been anyone else talkin' like that about you, I'd've knocked their teeth out."

The man gave an agitated huff. "What choice did I have? Whatever is going on, it's clear they're not happy to see me -- and if you had just let me play the scapegoat, then..."

Vhox couldn't be sure what sort of expression he made at that remark, although it made Rin falter, the shadow of something meek and embarrassed crossing his expression.

"What're you even doin' here?"

"Hells if I know." Part of Vhox knew he should be paying better attention, but he found himself studying the sharp lines of Rin's collarbones instead. They were more prominent than he remembered. Probably back to eatin' once a blue moon.

"That Razhe fellow showed up at the Gate looking for me by name, saying that you were in trouble -- wrong side of the local militia, or some such. Given your track record, it seemed believable--"

It took a moment to recall how in the seven hells Razhe would have known the first thing about Rin. Then: oh. The conversation they'd had shortly after Vhox's initial arrival, before he discovered what a miserable prat Razhe was, during which he had been prodded to confess details about the man whose absence had reawakened the depth of a loss that Vhox could not articulate -- something yawning and empty and desperate, a void he could not fill with fresh faces and drunken trysts no matter how hard he tried.

At the time, Vhox was sure as anything that he'd never see the man again. Yet now, Rin was here, in the flesh, looking especially small in the low light, more like he had when they first met than when things were good -- when Rin stopped straightening the life out of the beautiful mess of slate-blue curls that framed his violet eyes, and when he could sometimes, if Vhox was possessed to say something particularly stupid, be coaxed to smile.

"Who are these people?" Rin's voice broke the thought, with a bite in his tone that made another part of Vhox recoil. These people. These poor backwater desert dwellers who slept out in the elements and could rarely afford to eat more than the sinewy animals they caught out in the wilds, the antithesis of everything a dignified and well-learned individual like Rin could possibly respect. Just like him. "Why are you here?"

"They're -- my family, Rin."

An uncomfortable silence rose, both of them seeking words they couldn't find.

"After we went our separate ways, I... went lookin', I suppose. Turns out I had some family left after all." People like him, after Vhox had grown up thinking there were none. "There's a lot I never told you. A lot I did to you that I shouldn't've done," and if Vhox were a more tactful man, he might've thought to word himself in a way that didn't make Rin shrink back, in a way that didn't ring with the fresh memory of a crowd who had declared their coupling a sin. "I'm sorry you were brought here. I know it all seems strange, but... ever since I got here, I've been thinkin'... this is for the best. These people, Rin, they..."

He choked on the words. Even now, confessing what he was...

"Look--" when Rin spoke now, it seemed restrained, as though he were speaking against a hand at his throat. "Vhox, look at me."

Vhox did not abide him. In that moment, it was Rin who reached out, brushing messy bangs away from the other's eyes -- and then his hand lingered for too long, uncertain.

"Is this what you want?" A pause, as if to consider. "Are you happy here?"

Try as Vhox might to find it, he could not find the judgement in those eyes. He saw only a muted confusion, a sadness: an unspoken query that seemed to read, but what about the sandy beaches of Bloodshore? The look of the summer sunsets over Costa del Sol? The satisfaction of pulling a good haul in the nets off the fishing boats? The freedom to come and go -- to jump on the next boat due out of the harbor and end up anywhere, any time?

Rin always had been sharp, even if a bit scatter-brained and way too easy to misdirect. But maybe it was obvious: it was not what Vhox wanted. It was what he deserved. Quarantined from the rest of the world, people who couldn't understand what it meant to be born something dangerous and unwanted. People he would hurt. People who would hurt him, not realizing what he was and what that meant. The world was like that, full of change and fresh faces and people who never knew more about you than you wanted them to know. Vhox lived his whole life riding in those waves, and for once... for once, he wanted some of those faces to stay the same -- to have something in his life to hold him steady, something he didn't have to run from. Something he had in that time with Rin, and Luma, and...

Vhox tilted his head gently into that hand, a quiet and wordless moment of vulnerability, savoring the warmth of another touch that he wasn't sure he would feel again. Then, when he held Rin's wrist to move it away, he was struck again by how delicate it was in his grip, renewing an overwhelming and protective desire that reassured: this is for the best.

"... I should be. And if I don't get to say anythin' more to you, let it be this: I'm glad you cut things off. You deserve better than what we had -- better than someone like me."

Rin opened his mouth at once, flashing teeth in the start of a reply that Vhox expected would sting. But whatever he meant to say, he didn't get to. A shadow cast from the cave entrance, and Vhox recognized Razhe in the silhouette.

"Good. If that is how you feel -- then may Azeyma grant what you both deserve."

. . .

No. Godsdamn it, no--

His recollection of it all was dark, murky, churning waters over an abyss he could not peer into. There was Razhe, spouting some shite about Azeyma like the sort of overzealous madman you only hear about from the poor sods who bounced out of Ishgard; grabbing hands amidst a shuffle of movement (Vhox saw a form dive toward Rin and landed a solid kick in the whoreson's stomach), raised and desperate voices, panic like the tide rising up over his head when the realization of what Razhe meant to do hit him full force.

All of it was distant, almost intangible, disjointed sights and sounds that lacked the necessary cohesion for Vhox to clutch them in his hands. But there was one thing he did remember clearly: the terror and confusion writ in Rin's face.

"Fuck!" Even now, his arms wouldn't hold the weight of his swaying body. He was crawling on hands and knees, the deep rusty hue of dried and flaking blood stained up to his elbow, fingers smearing almost-black in the puddled ichor that gathered and settled in the crevices of the floor. Just like before. Just like the last time. As he struggled to discern other shapes in the space, he spotted one in the corner of the cavern, mouth agape and eyes glassy, a gaping wound painted crimson where a throat should have been.

If panic was the tide, then that was the moment in which Vhox snapped open his mouth, watching the distant glimmer of the ocean surface as he abided a futile impulse to breathe, drawing nothing for his lungs but seawater. It filled his throat, stung in his eyes, and his stomach churned, chanting no, no, not this, not him, until he was spared the oncoming breakdown by the reveal that the body was not Rin's -- but Razhe's.

He still felt like he was swallowing seawater.

"Rin, gods -- Rin, where are you?" Everything was so dark, masked in a stench so thick it was no wonder he couldn't breathe. "Rin, if you're there -- if you can hear me--"

"He's gone."

Another shape at the entrance of the cavern. Imzha.

"What the bloody fuck does that mean?" Whatever elaboration Imzha intended was lost beneath the force of Vhox's own voice, sharp with a wild anger. He rose onto unsteady feet, fists clenched, the stick of lingering blood an ever-present reminder of the monster that yet stalked at the edge of his consciousness. "How could you let that godsdamned nutter in here with a fistful of poison, knowing what he could do with it--"

"Vhox -- please, calm down--"

"Don't you fucking tell me to calm down! Where is Rin?"

He had trusted them. He had trusted the tribe. And then this--

"Your -- Rin, is fine."

He exhaled a bated breath.

"He is gone. He left, safely, of his own accord. I made sure that the tribe let him be."

Vhox staggered back down onto his knees. All of the fight ran out of his legs.

"Razhe acted of his own volition. He was not told to attack you." Imzha moved ever nearer, taking cautious and measured steps, as if she thought that to approach him too quickly might trigger the instinct to strike. It reminded him too much of the crew, after it happened. Too much of Ortolf. "For what little it may be worth, I'm glad you're safe. And your... 'friend' -- well. I suspect he won't be back."

Vhox might have expected that. It was what he expected to begin with. That was how it should've been. And yet it didn't... somewhere, in Vhox's chest...

"We didn't get to..." he didn't even say goodbye.

"It is just as I told you," she spoke softly, gently, as though she could read the despair in his features. "Outsiders don't understand. Who we are, what we can become -- it frightens them. Much like prey knows to fear its predator, even if they do not consciously know of the power that lives in our blood, they can sense it." She came to crouch onto her knees beside him. "Whatever you and Rin had... he never could have been with you."

"How do you know--"

"He said so."

The corners of his eyes stung. Everything smelled of salt and tasted of bitter.

'Course he would.

"He said you were a monster." Imzha's voice was a resonant murmur in the still of the cavern. "A dangerous creature he was afraid to imagine he might have ever loved."

He was a fool if he ever thought Vhox a man worth loving. And what a fool Vhox had been -- both of them. Better that Rin live long enough to find someone proper and refined, with whom he could have educated conversations (without the distraction of Vhox's carnal appetites) and who could make good money without subsequently spending moons looking over his shoulder, who would never gut him in a fit of terror or look at that precious nephew he so loved and think, what if something goes wrong and I--

"Do not think of him, Vhox. He is gone, and your place is here, with your family."

A hand touched to his face, with fingertips so much less delicate and nails that scraped just so. Nothing like Rin's, whose touch had been full of a fondness that Vhox missed so much that he hated it, so much that he wanted to trace over the lines with his own nails until they bled -- a fondness he was not sure he would ever feel again.

"Come. Let us see to those wounds."

Rin Weise is owned by @idealistsinc​

*k’tashlum is a fanon Huntspeak word used as a slur for Keeper of the Moon subgroup Miqo’te by some Seeker of the Sun tribes. Although this particular word makes no appearance on the page, general ideas and grammar structure for the fanon Huntspeak I follow can be found [here]. (Note that I am not the author of the article in question, and do not claim ownership of its ideas!)

[idealistsinc]

12 // compromise

n. a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims, principles, etc. wc: 523

Rin had left the door unlocked again.

Vhox spent just a second too long with his hand on the knob, suspended in the turn, wrangling his grin into something a little more shite-eatin’ than stupidly fond. Gods, going soft, he was. 

“Shouldn’t do that,” he announced grandly from the doorway. Rin startled from where he was folded up on the sofa with a book on his lap, his ears perking at the sound of his voice. Vhox bent to shuck his boots, stamping the sand out over the mat. “Unlocked door’s an open invitation s’far as an ol’ footpad’s concerned. Jus’ about anyone can wash up an’ steal y’off.”

“If you took a key, I wouldn’t.” Rin’s head angled, expectant. Another open invitation. Vhox crossed to kiss him, then dropped himself in his accustomed spot on the sofa with an unburdening sigh of relief. “Going to allow me to finish the chapter before you kidnap me away?”

“Too tired t’kidnap you. Gonna sit ‘ere an’ put my feet up — metaphorically, o’course — an’ hopefully my charm’s’ll sway you t’ c’mere.”

Rin leaned obligingly, a slight, steady weight against Vhox’s flank. “You can put them up literally,” he said, with a small wave of his hand to the coffee table.

They’d gotten into a little tiff a few weeks back about it. Something something filthy, Vhox, and Vhox had said, Please, we’ve done worse t’ it, and Rin had got all bristly like he sometimes did when he needed things to be just right. It wasn’t even worth arguing over. There were a lot of small things Vhox did as part of what he thought of as the Rin tax — a small price to pay, in the end, for an unlocked door and a soft bed.

But there was something new — a neatly-folded runner on his side of the table. “I thought y’hated when I did that.”

“‘Hate’ is a strong word. It’s unsanitary — that’s why I put the runner there.” Rin glanced back at the page, nonchalant, but his shy smile betrayed him. “By all means, make yourself at home.”

A lot of small things. Maybe Rin also had a Vhox tax. He felt something fizzy and floaty and altogether too soft buoy his heart as he propped his feet on the table, turning to press his lips to the closest bit of Rin he could reach, and thought, I am.

. . .

“Y’know I can pick th’ lock, right?”

“This again? Is that your argument for getting me to lock the door?”

“Gods, no. That’s my argument for gettin’ you t’ tear th’ damn thing out an’ put in a deadbolt. Who knows what gilts are skulkin’ around Bloodshore?”

“I know at least one. But if it’s important to you, I’ll see about a better lock.” A warm mouth on his neck, soft tail across his lap. “I suppose you intend to continue your storied career of breaking and entering. Testing your skills?”

“I could.” A tilt of his chin in his hand. “Or...y’could give me a key.”

That smile, like the distant shimmer of the sea.

“It certainly took you long enough to ask.” 

[idealistsinc]

10 // heady

adj. intoxicating, exhilarating; rashly impetuous wc: 770 content warning: references to explicit sexual scenarios, irresponsible use of alcohol, breaking and entering, vhox

Alcohol aided and abetted the lion’s share of Vhox’s choices. Whether this was a good or a bad thing depended on one’s perspective.

Three pints of lager, for instance, once encouraged Vhox to bullseye an apple off the top of a brave sod’s head with a knife during a regular darkmans tavern crawl. Good: Vhox won the betting pool and swelled his pockets with nearly a thousand gil, enough to comfortably float himself till the next ship swanned from the harbor. Bad: Vhox promptly used the gil to buy half the bar another round, and the rest was lifted off him a bell later while he had his trousers down and dick out behind the dumpster. Last time he ever tried to bed a self-confessed seasoned pickpocket—at least for that night.

Or there was the time a week ago when a lively Lominsan cask ale sparked a truly ingenious plan to make use of Rin’s Sharlayan upbringing to bullshit entry into a swanky, upper-class function in Costa del Sol, a party bound to be teeming with rich Sharlayan dignitaries, Limsan business gurus, and their mollycoddled crotch goblins. Good: Rin actually agreed to do it. Bad: Rin actually agreed to do it, which got Vhox thinking about what else Rin might agree to when he had something stronger than a watered-down malted wine warming his gut—a fantasy which was not at all helped by the revelation that Rin was very hot in ostentatious, impractical formalwear. Like a present, Vhox thought, eying the sleek silhouette of Rin’s capelet from across the Gegeruju manor ballroom that night, the gold clasp high at his throat. All he wanted to do was unwrap it.

Which was all to say, after one too many swallows of a smooth, expensive top-shelf liquor Vhox swiped from the open bar, Vhox found himself inexorably necking Rin bleedin’ Weise on a boardwalk bench.

Good: His mouth was really soft. Probably used balm or some shit; Vhox wouldn’t put it past him. He could taste sweet vermouth on Rin’s tongue, but it wasn’t half so sweet as the small sound Rin made deep in his throat, or the tangle of long, artistic fingers in the collar of Vhox’s neatly-pressed, equally impractical dress shirt.

Bad: That tangle turned to a kind of confused shove. Vhox broke away to see Rin’s eyes were wide and black and incredulous.

“What are you doing?”

Vhox never thought ahead to this part. What was he supposed to say? You’re hot. Wanna get outta here? 

“You’re hot,” said Vhox, master of eloquence. “Wanna get outta here?”

Impressively, despite the flush that Vhox saw creeping from beneath Rin’s collar, Rin’s tone was even and cold. “And go where, exactly?”

They’d passed several seedy inns that were reasonable contestants, with only, Vhox estimated, a thirty percent chance of getting accosted by prostitutes on the way over. But Vhox had a better, alcohol-aided idea. He leaned in a little and dropped his voice to what he hoped was a seductive rumble. “Did you see tha’ boathouse?”

“...Are you serious?”

“’Course I am. Nobody’s watchin’ it. Th’ door’s jus’ got th’ one lock -- one o’th’ things in your hair should do it.”

“Vhox,” said Rin, finally, “that’s breaking and entering.”

Vhox shrugged, grinning. “An’ no ‘arm done to th’ place, unless you’re plannin’ on liftin’ a yacht outta there. But if you ain’t up for it, no skin off my back.”

Rin stared, then glanced at the distant, emptying party, crystals mounted on poles pouring colored light on white sand. Vhox waited for...something. Contempt, maybe, or disgust, the thin facade of their companionship broken to show what was always there. Bad: Vhox might never see Rin again after this night, leaving a momentary gap Vhox would have to fill with drunken lays under weeping tavern ceilings until he found somebody who looked half as good in black as Rin did. 

Good: If this worked, Vhox would get to fuck Rin in a boathouse. 

That was the secret, really. Bad or good outcomes didn’t matter to Vhox in the long run—just the risks worth taking, heady gamble after heady gamble that all promised delicious rewards, as addictive a game as watching the chips fall where they may. 

Something changed in Rin’s face. When he turned back to Vhox, his eyes flickered to his mouth before looking up through dark lashes, an unconscious gesture that lit the heavy warmth of drink in Vhox’s stomach to a blazing flare of lust. “You’re a terrible influence,” said Rin, that dry wit like a stinging swig of cabernet, and finally, victoriously, kissed him back.

Good.

disaster pirate belongs to @mimiorzea

[idealistsinc]

24 // beam

wc: 959

There was no place on Hydaelyn Vhox liked better than the slovenly wharfs of Fisherman’s Bottom. From dawn to dusk, an organized chaos ruled the affairs of the menial fishermen pitching their hauls off their beaten drifters and trawlers, invigorated by the percolating odor of grease and rot; a man could hardly spit without hitting a scampering wharf rat of any species, rodents and children alike lurking about in the hopes of nabbing a sea-slick herring from the pier. Over the years, Vhox had found that, when his Hawkers’ Alley pickpocketing left him empty-handed, he could always scrape some coin from a weathered old fisher in need of young bodies to pull in the nets.

This morning bustled in the best way—a day of clear skies and low winds, everyone and their mother was out on the open water, and those who weren’t were already haggling the hauls on the pier. Vhox loitered, luxuriously at ease. He wasn’t hurting for gil just yet, but it behooved him to see who was around, which vessels came back from long voyages, which captains might employ him (and which crewmembers might come knocking to kill him). He kept a lazy eye out, admiring the vast and impressive shadow the Astalicia cast on the water. 

Nothing interesting yet. A Roegadyn lass and a Lalafellin merchant were really going at it a few yalms down the quay, but fights in Limsa were no longer intriguing to him unless there might be knives involved; a little white-haired Miqo’te child ran at the Astalicia like he wanted to tackle it, peals of laughter ringing in the salt-laden air—

“Rin! Rin, look!”

Vhox straightened, ears pricked. Where—? As Vhox picked apart the crowd, the man himself appeared, separating from a lump of merchants and walking leisurely down the wharf. “I’m coming!”

A kid? Vhox rummaged through his memory. Rin had mentioned a nephew a few times—although honestly, Vhox was always more than a little distracted where Rin was concerned. It was as he was trying to recall if Rin had ever said a name that Rin saw him.

Rin stopped short. For a moment, they only looked at each other from across the quay, a complicated and difficult expression flashing across Rin’s face, and then…

He waved to him. Vhox didn’t need more invitation than that to amble over, only just catching himself from draping all over him as he was wont to do.

“Rin,” he purred instead. “What brings you t’this side o’th’ tracks?”

“My nephew,” said Rin, in a tone he’d never heard Rin use—a kind of exasperated fondness. “I’m watching him today. Kallu’s smitten with ships, and I believe he’s currently rather enamored with the—”

“Rin!” bawled Kallu. “Are you lookin’!?”

Rin glanced over his shoulder. “I’d better, um…”

There was something very interesting about him today, thought Vhox. He hadn’t straightened his hair, and it softened the harsh planes of his face—in fact, the whole of him was soft, his body language as loose and relaxed and open as Vhox had ever seen it. It was for that reason that, when Rin went to check on his nephew, Vhox trailed behind.

The boy stood at the end of the pier, tail lashing in excitement as he stared at the lumbering mass of Astalicia; he turned at Rin’s approach, then looked again. He had truly startling green eyes. “Who’s that?”

“This is my—friend, Vhox,” said Rin, with some difficulty. Vhox was rather gratified to see him blush. “What was it you wanted to show me?”

Kallu stopped caring about Vhox immediately, happily reminded of his hyperfixation. “Th’ ship! It’s so big!! It’s got three masts, an’—an’ cannons! Do you know what it is?”

Rin squinted. “It’s a warship of some kind, I think.” His ears twitched. “Actually, Vhox, you’ve done some sailing. You would know about that sort of thing better than I, wouldn’t you?”

Before Vhox could process that Rin had asked his opinion, Kallu was at his feet, so enthused that his entire body seemed to wriggle like a worm on a line. “You’re a sailor!? Have you been t’—t’ Othard?” He gasped. “Have you seen Garleans!?”

Was he supposed to answer that? “I’ve been around,” Vhox said, as noncommittally as possible. He was not sure Rin would forgive him if Vhox started regaling his nephew with his more sordid stories. “But I ‘ave been on a ship like that one. She’s a man-o’-war—y’can tell ‘cus she’s armed.” Vhox pointed out the cannon mounted to her prow. “That’s her big guns, but she’ll ‘ave more all along her broadside. O’course,” he added, raising his eyebrows, “accordin’ to the Gate’s records she’s supposed to be a tradin’ ship, so you’d better not tell Rin.”

Kallu laughed. But Rin—

Rin smiled. A real one, the kind that made a person’s eyes crinkle, one that made Vhox suddenly feel like he’d missed the top stair on a staircase. “Vhox, really. I’ll not have you teaching him anything untoward,” he said. It should have sounded scolding, but his voice was warm.

“Nothin’ untoward about ships,” said Vhox. It was not his best comeback; his wit had utterly left him.

“Well, then,” said Rin. “I suppose we could make use of your expertise. We saw a ship this morning I couldn’t identify. Perhaps you’d like to join us and—”

Rin couldn’t even finish before Kallu was all but bouncing, beaming with a smile so wide and toothy it could have split his face. “Yes! Vhox, you gotta! I wanna know about th’ man-o’-war!!”

There were, Vhox knew, reasons that he shouldn’t. They were even good reasons.

But Vhox remembered none of them, just then. So he said, matching their grins with his own, “Ah, hells, why not?”

vhox belongs to @mimiorzea

[idealistsinc]

02 // sway

wc: 1,279 content warning: some spice and bad nautical innuendos

“What will we do with a drunken sailor early in the mornin’? Stick ‘im in a scupper wi’a ‘osepipe bo’om — ”

“You went heavy on the ale, didn’t you?” said Rin. “You’re out of tune.”

Vhox stopped singing to grin wolfishly at him. Though Rin had watched him down two pints of The Drowning Wench’s finest barleywine, he was clear-eyed and altogether sharper than Rin would have been if Rin had dared partake more than a sip. The only sign of his impending inebriation was his accent, drink bringing to the fore all the slurs and dropped consonants of a salt-sprayed sailor who hadn’t got his landlegs. “I’ll have y’know I was a regular shan’yman, four-eyes.”

“Right. Is scupper even a word?”

“What, it’s not in your books, so it's not a word?” He feigned offense, sighing the sigh of a put-upon schoolmaster. “A scupper’s a drain for th’ deck. Y’stick the head in like it’s a stocks, then beat ‘im with a hose.” That grin, all teeth, took on a lascivious quality that sent a not-unpleasant shiver down Rin’s spine. “Interested?”

“I’ll...pass, thank you.” Rin looked desperately about the hall for something else to hold his attention. It was the wee bells of the morning, and the members of Baderon’s guild had long given way to the late-night pirates, determined to make the most of their time ashore by drinking themselves insensible before they were called once again aboard come the dawn. A Roegadyn bard stood on the dias, playing an upbeat ditty on a fiddle and singing something filthy about the conquest of women in foreign lands while a few hopelessly plastered seamen made humiliatingly inept attempts to dance in the circular basin of the tavern.

Refusing to be ignored, Vhox propped his elbows on the table and leaned over, close enough for Rin to smell the malt on his breath and, beyond it, the faintest trace of sea salt. “Per’aps the problem’s y’haven’t had enough ale.” Before Rin could muster a word of protest, Vhox called, “I’tolwann, a pint o’ the blonde!”

“Hells, I’ll take a blonde!” a miscellaneous voice shouted in response. The whole of The Drowning Wench descended into a riot of laughter, such that for several thundering moments conversation was blotted out by a roiling sea of snickering sailors.

“By the Twelve, Vhox, you don’t have to yell,” said I’tolwann, manifesting suddenly behind Vhox’s chair. Her tail swished irritably as she raised her voice over the general clamor to be heard. “Rowdy lot. Look at what you’ve started.”

Vhox simply shrugged, looking unaccountably pleased with the chaos he had caused. That was his way — easy and sure as a ship sailing windward. Rin often wished for a quarter of his confidence. Even in his new, Vhox-approved tunic, he felt out of place among the sharp smiles and still-sharper blades of the average Lominsan company, a Sharlayan sheep in wolf’s clothing.

His blonde, such that it was, arrived before Rin could lose himself completely in anxious rumination. He sniffed delicately and, surprisingly, was not keeled over by the searing reek of alcohol. “Light?”

“Very,” said Vhox. “For your delicate cons’itution. Unless you would like to end up under th’ table again.”

Rin was never going to live that down. No, he had not held his first true introduction to Lominsan ale well at all — small mercies he didn’t actually recall the experience. Dubiously, he tried the ale. It had a smooth, honeyed flavor much unlike the resiny taste of barleywine, subtle and...yes, light. Vhox looked ever more smug. “You like it,” he said.

“It’s all right,” Rin replied noncommittally, but he took another swig regardless.

Up the stairs, the bard paused. She coaxed a few trumpeting notes out of the fiddle like a king’s herald; then, the bow flew over the strings in a lively race, the tune leaping and bounding over itself in its haste to reach some distant finish. Rin’s ears perked. It reminded him of…

The effect of the music on the crowd was swift and startling. “A jig!” a Hyuran man in a rat-tattered coat hollered to the hall at large. “Git yer legs movin’, fellas!” Almost as one entity, in a motion that struck Rin as oddly surreal, the crowd of scar-riddled sailors stood up, women and men, Miqo’te and Roegadyn and Hyur alike, and swallowed the room at once in a tumult of wild dancing, the pent-up energy of a typhoon suddenly and violently released. 

Vhox didn’t have to say a word. He just smiled that jackal’s smile. Rin sank into his chair, holding out his pint as though to defend himself with it. “No.”

“Why not? It’s traditional. Anyroad, y’danced at that fancy Sharlayan shindig.”

“That was the quadrille,” said Rin, forgetting to be embarrassed that he knew how to dance the quadrille. “I don’t know the steps to a — a Lominsan jig — ”

The grin sharpened. “What steps?”

Before Rin could say another word, Vhox had dragged him out of his chair and near swept him into the center of the hall, Rin clutching the handle of his pint for dear life as the blonde ale sloshed over the rim onto the floor. “Wait — wait!”

Well, if he was going to do this…

Rin took a stout gulp of the ale. It burned a trail of fire going down that time, a feeling that had absolutely nothing, nothing to do with Vhox’s hand at his waist. Then, he slammed the pint down on a nearby table and, before he could think better of it, took him awkwardly by the shoulder and whirled Vhox in a wide circle.

Vhox’s answering smile could have lit every oil lamp in Limsa.

Later, Rin would remember very little of the dance. It was a blur of turbulence, like a galley lurching in a storm, the hall vibrating with a nearly electric energy as Rin and Vhox made a hectic turn about the outskirts of the room. Twice his hair flew in his face as though tossed about by a gale — and once, Vhox reached to push it off his forehead, a laughing grin in his eyes, so that Rin didn’t even notice when a nearby Roegadyn sailor was felled by his drink and his sealegs and had to be carried out the door by the combined effort of three unfortunate men. Vhox had him under sway by then. Completely.

“Sway up!” Vhox hollered in a fit of the theatrical, and before Rin altogether knew what was happening, he was being hauled full off his feet and to the top of the stairs. Together, they pivoted into the relative seclusion of the shadowed stone archway where the night crept in, cool on the heat of Rin’s face; inside, the song had ended to the scattered, hooting applause of the pirates for that immensely skilled Sea Wolf fiddler.

But Rin had long since stopped paying attention. Vhox was still holding him in a facsimile of the jig, his hand pressed hard in the small of Rin’s back and his breath coming heavy. Rin’s heart thrummed.

“What does ‘sway up’ mean?” he asked, breathlessly.

“Nau’ical term,” said Vhox, and added, in a tone ripe with entendre, “Means to ‘oist a mast.”

And the ale must have truly hit Rin, then, because he kissed him, right there under the archway, where any passersby might conceivably see them. Then — in a bubbling outburst that surprised even Rin — he laughed. 

“Perhaps — ” he said. “Perhaps we ought to...beat to quarters.”

In the half-light of the tavern, Vhox’s smile seemed all canines and carnal promises.

“Per’aps we ought.”

vhox’s sea shanty stolen borrowed from here: [ link ] vhox belongs to @mimiorzea

[idealistsinc]

19 // where the heart is

wc: 1,338 content warning: fluff, but some sexually suggestive themes because...it’s vhox

Afterward, they lay with their limbs tangled under the sheets. The brackish smell of seaweed stirred the air through the open window, making the candle gutter. Rin thought without much conviction at all that he should get up to close it, but the warm and steady weight of Vhox’s arm about his waist was enough persuasion not to, and he listened instead to the sea’s rhythmic, gentle froth against the rocks far below, lulled.

“Comfortable?” said Vhox, trailing kisses along the ridge of Rin’s spine.

“How on Hydaelyn could I be comfortable?” said Rin. He stretched languidly and looked about for something to complain over, as was customary; his eye settled on a suspicious stain on the mattress that he was almost sure they hadn’t put there. “I dread to think what’s on these sheets.”

“Cum. Prob’ly piss.” Vhox, unbothered, continued his slow exploration to the space between Rin’s shoulderblades. Rin shivered theatrically—and not at all because of the way Vhox’s warm breath sighed against bare skin.

“And here I am paying perfectly good gil for the privilege of using this establishment’s bed. Highway robbery. I ought to stop paying them.”

He felt Vhox smile. “Goin’ to join me on the wrong side o’th’ law?” he said, flicking his tongue very deliberately at the nape of Rin’s neck and nearly making Rin lose his train of thought altogether.

“No.” Rin took a breath, forcibly railroading his mind back on track. “I was rather thinking my gil could be better spent. On—on a room of my own, perhaps.”

Truthfully, Rin had been measuring the idea in his head for some moons, at least since he had thrown out the package that was Senan’s final fuck-you correspondence to his errant sons; he had been living a vagrant, bounced between Walcher’s sofa and the straw-stuffed mattress on Luma’s floor, for the better part of a turn. Perhaps one day, he always told himself. He didn’t necessarily mind his living arrangement, and he might have continued on as he was if not for the table orchestrion he had seen in Hawkers’ Alley a fortnight past.

It was beautiful, all stained birch finishing and aurum regis inlay. Rin daydreamed for days about it, about an oak gateleg table he might have it on, about an etagere of his own where he might display the meager collection of orchestrion rolls he had managed to save and his much-abused violin, currently housed on one of Walcher’s leaning shelves among the miscellany. He was by no means rich, but he had gil enough for a few things here and there; and he had spent three bells counting up his savings before he realized that, in the space of an instant, perhaps one day had become why not now?

The change in Rin’s tone caught Vhox’s attention. Rin felt his tail twitch against his calf. “Here in Limsa?” he said, craning his head over Rin’s shoulder as though to try to see his face. “I thought you wanted to stay o’er with your brother in Ul’dah.”

“In the city proper or in Eastern La Noscea, yes,” Rin said. “Isha’a and Walcher will do just fine without me, and—well, Kallu is nearly old enough for schooling. If I live here, I can work full-time at Maelvaan’s Gate and contribute to his tuition.”

That was certainly reason enough…but it wasn’t the real one, truly, because when Rin imagined what life might be like in Limsa Lominsa, he didn’t imagine the arcanists’ guild. He imagined the fresh green of Kallu’s eyes on those hazy afternoons they’d spent on the beach among the saltspray and seagulls, watching passing vessels while his nephew announced their proper names with all the gravitas of a true captain (“That one’s a barque! You can tell ‘cus it has three masts and they’re all squareish. Do y’see it?”). He imagined Luma reclined on that overstuffed and threadbare sofa after a long day, her hair tied up, laughing so hard and helplessly she flushed. He imagined…

Well. Vhox was not irrelevant to his desire to stay in Limsa, to put it one way.

“So it’d be a…permanent thing,” said Vhox, unreadably.

Rin had told Isha’a first, to check himself against someone who was not so deeply involved or easily swayed. Isha’a asked him only one question: “Why do you want to move there?”

And Rin had confessed, finally, “I’m…I’m happy there, I think.”

Limsa Lominsa was a seedy, seedy town. He had hated it at first, this city infested with pirates, beset by mold, and wracked by storms so violent they shook the nails from the docks—but it was after the storms passed that the sun always shone its brightest. Limsa Lominsa, its food so spicy it scalded his tongue and evacuated his sinuses, its ale so rich he could nearly taste the soil in which the barley had grown, its music so lively it made his heart thrum, and its people…

Rough about the edges, yes. Liars and thieves and rogues, certainly. A people with crooked teeth and too many scars, a people who ate well, drank well, fought well, and laughed well, a people so spirited and interesting and painfully, blissfully alive—

Rin was not just happy; he was entirely in love.

“Yes,” said Rin. “Yes, I expect it would be permanent.”

He and Vhox’s relationship felt still in its infancy at times, their steps uncertain in new, intimate territory. But Rin would not have himself fail to say what he wanted, not anymore. He turned over in his arms to face him, more for Vhox’s benefit than his own, and added very clearly so that there could be no doubt at all of his intention, “You would be welcome to live with me, if you’d like to.”

Vhox tensed at once, with the wild, hunted eyes of a cornered animal. Rin forced himself not to react. It was a knee-jerk reflex, nothing more; and indeed, after a few long heartbeats, Vhox let out a breath and released Rin to roll over on his back. Thinking—considering. It was a good sign that he hadn’t refused out of hand, but Rin’s heart still thudded a little unevenly, worrying.

“‘s not such a good idea,” said Vhox, “y’know, with sailin’. I’d be floatin’ all over creation, showin’ up all ‘ours o’th’ night in all kinds o’states—an’ I can’t pay half th’ rent.”

All the while, Vhox couldn’t seem to look straight at him. If Rin actually thought he meant it, he would have let it be, but…Rin knew that wariness. Vhox was giving him excuses, giving Rin avenues to back out of the offer he’d made. You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to live with me, really.

Of course, Rin very much did. It wasn’t only the city he was hopelessly in love with, after all.

“Then think of it as a harbor,” said Rin, “for when you are in town. I have a vested interest in keeping your arse off the street—at all hours, in all states.” His lips quirked. “As a wise man once told me, ‘Cleaning up after drunk guys is my kink.’”

That was not the kind of state Vhox meant, and Rin knew it. But it got Vhox to snort, got him to stop looking for the scar that ran the length of Rin’s forearm, got him to say, finally, “I’ll ‘elp you get a place. I might know of somethin’ over in Bloodshore, if you’re in’erested.” His gaze flickered to Rin’s face, searching. “An’ I’ll…I’ll be around.”

Not a yes…but not a no, either. Something bubbly as foam rose in Rin’s chest, and he leaned over to kiss him, humming when Vhox relaxed at his touch and—

Vhox pulled away a little, blinking. “You’re purring,” he said.

Rin sat up rigidly. I haven’t done that in— “No, I’m not,” said Rin, flushing, and then flushing more when Vhox raised his eyebrows at him and grinned.

But he was.

And actually, once he’d started, there wasn’t a reason to stop.

vhox belongs to @mimiorzea

[idealistsinc]

09 // lush

wc: 1,555 content warning: nsfwish, interrupted coitus by way of the unfortunate reappearance of Limsan ale, Vhox being Vhox

Hauling a plastered, squirming Rin up the creaking stairs of an inn was not what Vhox had had in mind for this evening.

It was just meant to be a drink between the two of them. Call it an experiment. Rin always begged off alcoholic beverages when Vhox took him out to the Bismarck on some poor Ul’dahn merchant’s coin, but Vhox was determined that Rin at least taste the rich, malty sweetness of a good Limsan old ale — and if getting Rin tipsy loosened him up a little (enough so that he might be amenable to sloppy, drunken sex in the alley behind the tavern, even), well, that was all the better for Vhox.

So he had started Rin on his first pint with the intent that he’d only keep the ale coming if Rin could handle his drink. But he had been…distracted. It wasn’t his fault that the low collar of Rin’s tunic emphasized the column of his throat, or that halfway through his drink Rin had begun to speak vigorously on the point of the Limsan thalassocracy’s inherent fragility, so that Vhox was obliged to argue with him in good faith and, of course, call for another round to whet their tongues.

It was only when Rin stood up and immediately kissed the floor that Vhox realized they were both into their third pints of ale — and Vhox, who was also not completely sober himself, outweighed Rin by at least some fifty ponz.

That wasn’t to say there was nothing at all pleasant about Rin’s drunken company. In fact, despite being so utterly trashed as to require that Rin lean his full weight into Vhox’s side, Rin seemed to be putting forth a concentrated effort to make the experience as pleasant for Vhox as possible, which he was currently doing by way of thumbing slow, maddening circles just at the base of Vhox’s tail.

Oh, yes, drunk Rin had his virtues. Really, Vhox deserved a medal for reaching the room without stopping to fuck him against the wall.

“You’re goin’ to be in trouble if y’keep doin’ that,” said Vhox. He had barely kicked the door closed behind them before Rin was draping his arms about his neck, melting against him like a liquid and looking salaciously up at him through bleary, half-lidded eyes.

“Trouble?” said Rin. His fingernails scraped his hairline, sending electric tingles of lust shivering down Vhox’s spine. “You mean you didn’t bring me to an inn to fuck me, Vhox?”

Hell yes, said his body. Hell fucking yes.

Except there was a small, inconsequential, half-whispered voice in the back of his head that kept saying Rin was very drunk, that Rin was never this forward, that maybe Rin wasn’t being…quite himself. Vhox had already kicked that voice in the family jewels, but nevertheless, he found himself saying, with practically no conviction whatsoever, “I’m not goin’ to ‘ave you be sick on me. Y’can’t even walk.”

“How noble of you.” Rin dragged Vhox’s head down so he could work his lips along his jawline, his breath hot under his chin and his voice nearly a purr, “But I should hope that I can’t walk after you’re done with me, hm?”

Vhox’s brain immediately and irrevocably left the premises. He bucked his hips, feeling the press of Rin’s arousal, and was rewarded with a filthy moan the likes of which he’d never heard from Rin before. Gods, why the fuck hadn’t he tried this earlier? The part of him that was still capable of semi-coherent thought wanted to test this new and oversensitive Rin, draw him out, see just how responsive he could make him…but Vhox was, at the end of the day, impatient and incapable of grasping the benefits of delayed gratification. His hand was already at the waistband of Rin’s trousers, busy with the button, while he busied his mouth scraping his teeth down the velvety skin of Rin’s throat.

“Fuck. Ah—”

Rin’s hands fisted in his hair. He jerked Vhox’s head away hard enough to hurt, and before Vhox could think past the haze of lust, or even process Rin’s expression enough to realize that was not a gesture of ardor, Rin had already vomited colorfully down the front of Vhox’s shirt.

Well, thought Vhox, when he was again capable of such a thing. I s’pose that’s what I get, innit?

There was a moment of immense silence as Rin stared at him in slowly dawning mortification. His face had gone rather gray, spit trailing from the corner of his mouth. “Oh,” he said, in a tiny, trembling voice that deftly murdered what little was left of Vhox’s libido. “Oh no. Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry. Let me—”

Rin made a clumsy sort of motion as though to wipe it off with his sleeve, but, still in close quarters, he ended up nearly smacking himself in the face for the trouble. Vhox released him and took a measured step back so he could inspect the damages. He looked rather more like he’d been stabbed than gone awry of drunken emissions — old ale was astonishingly red coming up — and he was also still far more uncomfortably aroused than a man covered in vomit had any right to be, but one thing was certain: they would not be going any farther tonight unless Vhox wanted to risk a facial…and not even the fun kind. Small blessings that Rin hadn’t eaten—

At which point Vhox put a hand to his forehead in sheer self-reproach. I’m such a fucking idiot. Of course Rin hadn’t eaten anything. He’d all but dragged him to the tavern, and here he was, letting him drink three damn pints on an empty stomach. “It’s fine, Rin,” he sighed, shrugging self-deprecatingly to take the edge off that first little nibble of guilt. “I don’t know what I was expecting—”

He trailed off. Rin’s ears had lowered against his skull, giving the overall effect of a stray dog Vhox had just booted in the ribs. Vhox felt immediately like a prick, which meant, of course, that he would just have to keep talking until he finally landed on something that took that horrible look off his face. “Listen, this ain’t even the first time I’ve had somebody puke during foreplay. Hells,” he added, inspired, “the first time I tried to give someone head, his cock hit the back of my throat and I—”

Rin put his hands over his face. “Vhox—”

But there was a warm and familiar note of scorn in it. Vhox grinned. “The point is, I’ve been there—enough to know that you’re gonna wanna sit down to ride this one out.” So saying, he steered Rin toward the bed, not at all confident in Rin’s innate sense of balance. “Stay there an’ try not to throw up on anythin’ expensive. I’ll be back, all right?”

Downstairs, Vhox pilfered a bucket and a tin cup from the kitchens when the concierge wasn’t looking. He came back into the room to find that Rin had slid bonelessly to the floor, as green as a tenderfooted sailor rocking in his first storm. Vhox barely got the bucket in front of him in time.

“You good?” he said, when Rin had finished spitting up bile. “Can you keep some water down, you think?”

Rin made a helpless little hand motion that Vhox chose to take for a yes. He handed Rin the cup, then got down onto the floor with him and leaned back against the bedframe, working to undo the snaps and buttons of his ruined tunic. For a while, Rin dry-heaved into the bucket without speaking. Vhox noticed that he held his own bangs back from his face.

Finally, Rin said, “You don’t have to stay on my account, you know.” His forehead shone with sweat. There was no force to his voice at all…but there was something about his eyes that made it seem like an accusation.

“Who said I’m stayin’ on your account? Cleanin’ up after drunk guys is my kink.”

Rin made a face, but continued, with a drunken sort of persistence, “I can’t—satisfy you tonight.”

Oh.

Is that what he thinks I…

Out loud, Vhox said, smiling over the savage twist in his gut he had already decided to forget about come the morning, “I know. And I fully intend that you’ll make it up to me.” He idly traced his finger along Rin’s collarbone and was gratified when he shivered a little. “But you can’t do that if you choke to death in the middle of the night.”

“A vested interest,” said Rin, in a tone Vhox couldn’t read. He finally put the bucket between his knees and tilted his head back against the mattress, violet eyes squinting shut. “So you’re staying?”

Vhox was still quite drunk. He knew he was, because the words nearly meant something more to him than he thought Rin had meant them to mean. So you’re staying?

For a little while. For just one sun at a time until the next long voyage, the next siren song, the next desperate flight. Until he got hurt, or Rin did; until that day when Rin did mean something more by stay.

But until then, who was Vhox to deny himself his pleasures?

“Yeah, I am.”

vhox belongs to @mimiorzea

[idealistsinc]

better off

content warning: arguing, some nsfw dialogue, then tooth-rotting adorable

When it came to matters of presentation, reining in Rin Weise was as futile as laveering a schooner in a storm.

Rin had swathed the sofa in every last tunic and pair of trousers Vhox owned. Vhox languished in a nearby armchair as he watched Rin gnaw a hangnail, pacing from one rumpled, sun-bleached shirt to another with a brow so furrowed it looked like it was trying to migrate to his chin. He had only agreed to let Rin choose his outfit because Rin had already bitten his fingernails to the quick over this whole Maelstrom business; letting Rin expend his nervous energy on something productive tended to go far better than the alternative. Anyway, thought Vhox, draping himself over the arm of the chair, at least he had an excuse to lounge about shirtless without Rin accusing him of being deliberately provocative. If he could just get Rin to stop fretting for long enough to look at him…

Rin paused from wearing a hole in the rug to hand Vhox a sedate white shirt, miraculously unblemished by seawater, sweat, or other unmentionable substances. “Try this one.”

Vhox held it up for inspection with a suggestive flex of his bicep. “Y’know,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “I think this is th’ one I wore on that Lower Decks tavern crawl, when you dragged me off be’ind the dumpsters an’—”

“Thank you,” said Rin. “I recall. Please put on the shirt, Vhox.”

Sighing theatrically, Vhox navigated his arms through the sleeves. “Never thought I’d see the day where y’wanted me to put on more clothes.”

That didn’t elicit even the ghost of a smile. The moment Vhox had his head through, Rin attacked him with all the deadly focus of a predator, tugging out wrinkles, straightening sleeves, and tightening the collar so that it near strangled him (“You tryin’ t’kill me?” Vhox griped. Rin, rolling his eyes, graciously undid one more button than his sense of propriety demanded). Then, Rin stepped back and looked Vhox over with such a critical gaze that Vhox resisted a childish urge to squirm.

“The sleeves are rather billowy,” Rin remarked, finally. “A bit too high seas.”

“The Maelstrom’s an armada. High seas’s what they’re goin’ for.”

“Point taken.” Rin frowned, then reached to brush Vhox’s bangs out of his face, a gesture Vhox mistook for affectionate until he added, “We ought to do something with your hair.”

Vhox’s stomach wrenched like a rudder grinding against a rock. “Nothin’ wrong with it,” he said. He caught Rin’s wrist; Rin pulled out of his grip in a huff, his tail twitching.

“Perhaps not, if what you’re going for is ‘lawless rogue.’ I’m only going to tie it back—”

Yeah, thought Vhox, because that fuckin’ tattoo will go over so well. He could imagine the sight he would be, a beaten-down, washed-up wharf rat parading himself in front of a Maelstrom lieutenant with a godsdamned cult brand on his cheek. He moved out of Rin’s range, hurt sharpening his voice. “Hell no. It’s one thing to pick out somethin’ nice, but I ain’t gonna start puttin’ on airs.”

“It’s not about ‘putting on airs.’ It’s about getting your foot in the door,” Rin said, with the infuriating patience of a parent for a tantruming child. “The Maelstrom administers to eight other squadrons. You’re going to need to show more than your usual bureaucratic finesse; I expect their standards aren’t exactly lax.”

If before the rudder had merely scraped on a rock, now Vhox felt the jolt of the whole bloody ship beaching on the shore, splintering the hull like matchsticks and throwing half the crew in the bay to drown. He’d been standing there for all of five minutes. If Rin judged that he didn’t pass muster, what the hell was Vhox even doing, thinking he might have a shot at making something more of himself than a lawless rogue?

“You think I can’t get in.”

Rin, reading the change in Vhox’s face, stilled. “I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t need to.” Vhox swung an arm at the tangle of tunics and jackets sprawled on the sofa. A prickling heat burned beneath his collar. “That’s what all this is, ain’t it? You don’t think they’ll take me ‘less I’m somethin’ I’m not—”

“That isn’t what I—”

“—so I’ll save us both th’ godsdamned time. Why go?”

“Because they might pay you,” said Rin. His voice went pitchy in his attempt not to raise it, cracking like a prepubescent kid whose balls had just dropped. “I’m sorry you feel that’s encroaching on your bloody gods-given right to do whatever you want, but what do you want me to say? That appearances don’t matter? That nothing you do will make a difference so that you have an excuse not to try? Because they do matter, and it does make a difference. Here in the adult world, sometimes you have to play the part just long enough to get hired.”

“Yeah?” Vhox said, before he could think better of it. “How’s that workin’ out for you, Rin? Tell me all about how good you're doin' at your job."

Rin’s expression blanked. Just like that, like closing a window, and just like that the air was crushed from Vhox’s lungs in a horrible vice of regret.

A fortnight past, Vhox came home from hauling nets at the docks to find Rin frozen in the grips of a panic attack so severe he couldn’t catch his breath to tell him what was wrong. Vhox had held him for nearly an hour, feeling the pounding staccato of Rin’s heart against his sternum and his shallow gasps on his neck, before Rin calmed down enough to give a disjointed and dissociative explanation: Rin had made a calculation error on a shipment through Maelvann’s Gate. It was a minor error, but such a taxing and expensive fix that Rin’s boss had called Rin into her office to suffer a formal reprimand, which utterly convinced Rin he was as good as fired—without an income, Kallu couldn’t go to school, Luma would never forgive him, and Rin would lose the flat and everything in it—without the flat, Rin would have to move back in with Isha’a, they would argue because Rin had never learned how to keep his damnable mouth shut, and Vhox would be turned out on the streets and maybe starve, maybe wind up stabbed to death in the gutter—

There were other inevitabilities that whirled in Rin’s head, Vhox was sure, but Vhox didn’t get to hear about them. By the time he got to the part where Vhox would clearly die without him, Rin was sobbing too hard to finish.

That was the funny thing about Rin. When Rin believed he needed to play a part, he played it so well that not even Vhox had seen the burden on Rin’s shoulders until Rin had already collapsed beneath it. Vhox realized that day he had no idea when Rin had begun to take on Vhox’s well-being as his responsibility—and it was for that reason, and that reason alone, that Vhox had sought out employment with the Maelstrom, determined to relieve Rin at once of that weight.

In the present, Rin forged doggedly through the silence. “I am trying to help you.”

“An’ I didn’t ask for your help!” If taking that burden off Rin’s shoulders was Vhox’s aim, his failure was already writ in the stress-carved canyons on Rin’s forehead and the heavy bruises under his eyes. Rin was trying to help him, and how did Vhox repay him? By shouting at him. By pissing away the last twenty-odd years of his life, time from which Vhox might never be able to recover into the kind of person who could hold a steady job, the kind of person who might actually be deserving of— “I never asked for you to feed me or put a roof o’er my head. I ain’t a godsdamned charity case, some beggin’ starveling needin’ you to play benefactor—”

“No, you’re not.”

“Then maybe don’t act like you’re doin’ me such a favor, dolin’ out gil to stroke your own dick—”

“By the bloody fucking Twelve, Vhox!” said Rin, very loud. His frustration trembled in his legs; he strode up to Vhox and took him firmly by the shoulders, but...even upset as Rin was, his touch was gentle. “Is this what we’re doing now? Being vulgar for the sake of it, hoping I’ll storm out in disgust so you can tell yourself what a terrible person you are? Because you’re not, and I won’t. You can’t push me away—shockingly, I take care of you because I love you, you brainless twit—”

Vhox heard nothing else Rin said. It was as if the floor had pitched beneath him and dropped him to his knees, knocking the breath and the anger out of him in one fell swoop.

“What?” said Vhox.

Rin paused. Vhox saw him mentally backtrack through his tirade, saw the moment Rin realized what he’d said cross his face. All at once, the tension between them sagged like an empty sail. Rin’s fingers clenched in Vhox’s shirt, his chest deflating in a long, defeated sigh. “I love you,” he said again. “That’s—that’s not how I imagined I would say that, but…”

Vhox didn’t know what Rin meant to say next, and somehow, he didn’t care. An eddy of warmth had washed through him, a feeling like the heat in his stomach on the first sip of ale, like sun-warmed skin on a summer afternoon; and he noticed for the first time the flush in Rin’s cheekbones that made his markings pop, the curl of his hair over the rims of his glasses, those wide eyes behind them. Gods, but he really did have the prettiest fucking eyes Vhox ever saw. The color reminded him of the sky right at sunset, when the sun seemed to douse itself out in the sea in a final burst of violet—

Before Vhox could think about what he was doing in the slightest, he was already kissing Rin.

To be fair, Rin kissed him back. Then, as though Rin suddenly remembered he was supposed to be upset with Vhox, he pulled away, bewildered. “Wait. What are you…?”

“I’m a fuckin’ blockhead,” said Vhox. His hands settled in the familiar and well-tracked groove at the small of Rin’s back, and Vhox tugged him closer, enjoying the shiver that quailed up Rin’s spine. “Why would I wanna argue with you when there’s so many other things I can do wi’ my mouth—”

“Are you seriously—you’re flirting with me?” Rin barked a short, baffled laugh. “We were just in a row. I legitimately thought I was going to strangle you. Perhaps we should, I don’t know, talk about that?”

“Later. I wanna make it up to you.”

“And how, pray tell, are you going to do that?”

“I was thinkin’ I’d start with a blowjob,” Vhox said. He considered, then added, “The stranglin’ can be negotiated.”

Rin stared at Vhox long enough that Vhox almost let him go, suddenly anxious he had come on too strong after an argument the caliber of the one they’d just had. But then something in Rin’s face thawed, and Rin twined his arms about Vhox’s neck with the kind of laughter that always buoyed Vhox’s heart to hear—his real laugh, soft and somehow shy.

“Far be it from me to turn down such a compelling offer,” Rin said. Then, his smile turned suggestive, a promise that often led to future orgasms for Vhox—which was to say, if Vhox had at all been thinking before, he certainly wasn’t now. “With ever so much to make up for—well, you’d best get started.”

And Vhox, indeed, got started.

. . .

Some bells and several orgasms later, Vhox and Rin lay entwined beneath the sheets. The light ebbed through the window, leaving shadows in its wake as the sea leaves shells. Vhox fought against a sated, comfortable sleepiness by staring up at the ceiling and counting the cracks in the plaster. Over the years, he’d seen many ceilings, usually while a buxom woman rode his cock—smoke-yellowed ceilings, ceilings splotched with mold, cobwebbed and fissured and sometimes falling in. But Vhox already knew this ceiling. Rin led a furious crusade against the spider infestations with a broom for this ceiling, mopped the walls when the seaspray made the room too damp, and already talked about whitewashing over the lone crack—

Llymlaen’s tits, Vhox thought, catching himself. It’s just a godsdamned ceiling.

It wasn’t just a godsdamned ceiling, though. It was Rin’s ceiling. Vhox didn’t know why, but that seemed like an important distinction to make.

The problem was that the warm, steady weight of Rin’s head on his chest kept dredging up all manner of complicated and incoherent feelings. Vhox knew he would have to wade through them sometime, plumb down to the bottom of the muck where Rin’s confession rested like a small, glimmering gem and take it in his palm, see if its facets would cut. Maybe, though, for only a moment, he could just…

Rin moved away from Vhox to prop himself up on his elbows, his tail weaving in restless sweeps against the mattress. Vhox was a little disappointed, but not surprised; Rin’s post-nut clarity always came in the form of anxious tidying. “I should iron that shirt if you’re to wear it tomorrow,” Rin said, proving the point. “As I recall, it was rather unceremoniously discarded in the hallway.”

“Leave it,” said Vhox. “I’ll take care of it later.”

“Vhox, you’ve never ironed a shirt in your life.”

No, he hadn’t. But if it was important to Rin to iron that shirt, goddammit, Vhox would iron the bloody shirt. “It’s a metal bit an’ some heat. What could go wrong?”

“You could burn the flat down.” Rin sat up and shifted his legs over the side of the bed. “I won’t be very long. I’ll just—”

Vhox grabbed his hand. He hadn’t expected to do that, and so for a blank string of seconds he just limply held it, forgetting everything he might have wanted to say. “Rin,” he finally managed, his name soft in his mouth. “Stay here a while.”

Rin hesitated. Then, crossing his legs beneath him, he stayed.

Vhox didn’t believe in that gooey bullshite about two bodies fitting perfectly together. He had seen enough bodies to know that, whether they were lithe or bulky, gangling or lumbering, bodies were awkward. They shat, smelled, vomited, leaked out snot or tears, came too soon or not soon enough, fumbled, choked, and sometimes jabbed him way too hard in the side with those bony fucking elbows, Rin. But...as Vhox folded Rin into his arms, tracing the delicate skin that hardly clothed the cage of his ribs, Vhox found himself staggered beneath a surge of protectiveness for this particular body, a built-up flood with nowhere to go. It would be one thing if Vhox had to protect Rin from the pirates, bandits, and thieves that nested in the dark corners of Limsa Lominsa—Vhox could throw a punch like nobody’s business—but that wasn’t the threat Rin faced, day after day after day.

The most dangerous person in Rin’s life was, and had always been, Vhox himself.

“Sorry we fought,” said Vhox. “I didn’t mean that shite about the…I just…”

I, what?

But Rin spoke before Vhox could name that shipwrecked feeling. “No, you were right to be upset. I was much too critical,” he said, drawing idle lines between the freckles on Vhox’s forearms with a ragged fingernail, his ears folding back. In Rin’s words, Vhox heard the blistering echo of a man Rin tried so hard not to be—for that alone, Vhox would’ve decked Senan fucking Weise in the goddamned teeth. “It’s not that I think there’s something wrong with you, only that…people are judgmental. I—I wanted the Maelstrom to give you a chance.”

“You didn’t need me t’fix my hair or any o’that to give me a chance.”

Rin scoffed. “The way I remember it, you hardly gave me a choice in the matter. I couldn’t have avoided you even if I wanted to.”

Vhox remembered, too: Rin’s dull, stringy hair. The sharp, hollowed angles of his face. The preternatural stillness with which Rin had held himself, a living ghost of a person. Rin had bitched the whole walk to the Bismarck, of course, but what Vhox remembered best was how his eyes came alive at that first taste of Bianaq bream. Gods, how Vhox had craved him. How badly he’d wanted to see how he might come alive at the tang of a malty Limsan old ale, or the flavor of Vhox’s tongue in his mouth—

“Did y’want to avoid me?” Vhox asked.

“…No,” he said, as though it were some kind of confession. “But I wouldn’t have admitted it on pain of death—I suppose I had my biases, too.” Rin faltered, his voice falling. “You don’t have to wear that shirt tomorrow, you know. I didn’t intend to be quite so forceful about it—”

“It wasn’t about that. I was—” What was it Rin had said earlier? “I was bein’ vulgar for th’ sake of it. Pickin’ a fight.”

When Vhox didn’t continue, Rin prompted, “What for?”

“I dunno. ‘Cus...” Vhox drew an uncertain breath, something in him quavering like a loose sail in a hurricane. “‘Cus I’m scared, I guess.”

Rin turned his head as though to look at him. Vhox squeezed Rin tight to keep him still, already more exposed and vulnerable than he would have liked to be, and so was surprised when Rin nudged his face into the soft space under Vhox’s chin and, very faintly, began to purr—a gentle rumble against Vhox’s pulse that evoked not so much a memory as a primal bond, something that soothed even as it bound, something that growled, Mine. Vhox closed his eyes and let himself, for a moment, be comforted.

“I don’t have a handle on this ‘steady job’ thing,” said Vhox, when he was again capable of speech. “Even if the Maelstrom takes me…I don’t know what the hell I’m doin’. I’ve been runnin’ from th’ law my whole life, not bein’ its bloody arm. An’—th’ job’s dangerous.”

Even as Vhox said it, though, he knew that wasn’t what he meant. When he dug down to the rotting root of it, every fear was really one fear: What if I hurt someone?

It wouldn’t be hard. One stab, one shot, one punch too many and Vhox would slaughter someone he hadn’t meant to kill, waking up again with pooled ichor squelching beneath his nails, waking up again to the fear like drowning of not knowing whose blood it was. And Rin. Rin would come for him even if Vhox got thrown in gaol. Rin would come even if Vhox was hurt, even if Vhox was the kind of hurt that made him do worse—

Vhox had never harmed Rin so far, and by the good graces of the entire pantheon of the Twelve, even motherfucking Azeyma, Vhox prayed he never would. But that didn’t stop Vhox from thinking about the flintlock pistol he made Rin keep in the bedside drawer, ostensibly for security reasons but really for Vhox’s own peace of mind. That didn’t stop Vhox from trying and failing to scrape together the courage to tell Rin outright what he wanted him to do with that gun if Vhox ever went feral in Rin’s presence again.

That small, glimmering gem had a sharp edge, after all. Even if Vhox was killing him, Rin would refuse to shoot.

“I’m dangerous.” Vhox swallowed. Though Rin already knew, admitting it still felt like opening up bleeding wounds in his throat. “An’ I think sometimes you’d be be’er off with some Sharlayan milksop whose job doesn’t come wi’ a risk of killin’ him, somebody who ain’t got a chance in hell of layin’ a finger on you—”

“Vhox—” said Rin, twisting to face him.

“Hang on. I’m not finished talkin’ yet.”

Rin’s tail flicked uneasily against his thigh. Vhox's gaze dropped to the clean line of Rin’s collarbone, his narrow chest that rose and fell with each quiet breath—and then a soft hand cupped his jaw, a thumb gliding over that scarred tattoo Vhox always hid beneath his mop of reddish hair until, finally, Vhox lifted his eyes to Rin’s. He didn’t know how he felt about what he saw there except that it ached in an inarticulable way, like prodding fingers into a healing bruise. The lesson Vhox had learned in his twenty-odd years of life: the people in his life didn’t come back. The people in his life didn’t stay.

But Rin did.

“It’d be for the best if you left,” Vhox said, an echo of something he told Rin once in a cave in bumfuck nowhere, Gyr Abania, and something he still in his heart of hearts believed, “but I...I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want you to run off with some struttin’ prick from Sharlayan. I want you to be wi’ me—an’ that? That scares the everlovin’ shite out of me.”

Because Vhox had never felt like that before. Because Vhox had drifted unanchored through his life until that day Rin had gored a ravenous, insatiable hole inside of him as he left, ripping away that which Vhox hadn’t even known he had to lose. Because when Rin left, Vhox wouldn’t just lose Rin. Vhox would lose the screams of Rin’s violin as he practiced, a barrage of tuneless notes like a streetcat’s mating call that, when Vhox least expected it, resolved into a chord so full it raised the gooseflesh on his arms. Vhox would lose the sweet familiarity of tossing his jacket over the same chair every evening, falling into the same warm bed with freshly-laundered sheets, never worrying he might get shanked in his sleep, his money stolen halfway to Ul’dah before his corpse was even stiff. Vhox would lose that little hiccup in his chest he got every time he washed up into Bloodshore after dark and saw that Rin had hung a lantern for him, though Vhox hadn’t told him he would be coming by that night—or any night, because Vhox refused to take a key to the flat on the grounds that he couldn’t bear to love this place and then be forced to leave it.

But, somewhere in him, Vhox also knew that there wouldn’t be a when. There were words for that knowing, and they were...

Rin kissed him before he could speak, lips brushing just long enough to pull the air from Vhox’s lungs. “I am a strutting prick from Sharlayan,” he said softly. “So if that’s what you want, I’m not going anywhere.”

If that’s what you want. As though there might actually be a fucking time when Vhox didn’t want him. As though Vhox’s wanting Rin wasn’t built into the fabric of the universe like death, taxes, and people jacking off.

“I love you.”

Rin obviously hadn’t been expecting Vhox to say it. Neither had Vhox—but now that Vhox had said it, he felt that warm, gentle wash through his chest again, like the calm waters of a tidepool. Instead, it was Rin who seemed stripped of his armor, small and unsure in his arms. “Are you certain?”

“I’d swear it on my honor, if I had any o’that,” said Vhox. Rin’s face wavered, so that Vhox felt compelled to keep talking in the hopes he might stumble on something stupid enough to make him smile. “What else do people swear on? Fresh out of mothers' graves, uh. I’ve got my life, for whatever that’s worth, an’—”

“Vhox?”

“What?”

Rin did smile, then. He also made a strangled little coughing sound in the back of his throat, because Rin was, in fact, heroically trying not to cry. “Your life will do,” he said. “Now, for Thaliak’s sake, stop talking and kiss me.”

And who would Vhox be to say no?

vhox still somehow belongs to @mimiorzea maybe we share custody by now, who knows

[idealistsinc]

closed doors

The morning dawns a gauzy pink over Bloodshore. The ocean’s song hums along the beach, the lapping waves a faintly-tapped tambourine. Vhox wakes to a nest of blankets tangled about his hips and, for a moment, permits himself to bask in the sleepy warmth that tingles in every limb. He’ll never get used to the novelty of a familiar bed, nor of such a pleasant bedmate—

But a fumble of his arm over cold sheets reveals that Rin had already risen bells ago. It’s very like him to get up too early—assuming he even slept at all. Rin probably moved to the den to fuss over the Gate’s logbooks for the third time this week, a cup of coffee close at hand, violet eyes narrow and focused behind his glasses, his ears perked...Vhox stretches languidly, something soft unfurling in his chest like wings. Rin works much harder than his paycheque warrants. Perhaps, Vhox thinks, he will welcome a distraction from the sea of numerals, columns, and tables.

Vhox indulges a daydream of his preferred method of distraction for a little longer than he ought, then at last puts forth the effort to drag himself out of bed. The chilled, dewy dampness of the wooden floor chases the lingering heat from his soles; he shivers reflexively as he crosses it, reaching for the door.

There is something black under Vhox’s fingernails.

The room contracts to the size of a pin. Dirt, he tells himself as he digs the residue out from under his nailbeds, but dread coils around his throat like a hangman’s noose, cinching tighter and tighter with each passing heartbeat until his lungs spasm, until his eyes burn. Dirt, it’s dirt, it has to be dirt—

Through the window streams a red sun. Vhox notices, then, what he hadn’t before: the stains that splotch the floor like pitch. Ruddy sheets snarled at the foot of the bed. The reek of salt. Gods, how the room reeks of salt.

“Rin,” he breathes. “No, no, no—”

It is the way of these things that, when Vhox scrambles for the doorknob on the knife-edge of panic, it will not turn in his hand. His palms slip, soaked (with what), and he chokes on the memory of another door that would not open, another door slammed shut as the dark blotted out his vision and the acid boiled in his veins and he— “Rin, are you there? Th’ door’s—th’ door’s jammed. Rin?”

Oh, there is so very much that flakes from Vhox’s hands.

He sets his shoulder to the frame. He knows, in the way of these things, that he must get through that door—he crashes his weight into it, the sound drowned out by the screaming lash of the ocean against the shoreline. It does not budge. The floor sways beneath Vhox’s feet. There is no room, after all, just the shadows like the brig they threw him into while they decided what to do with him, a closed hole that stunk of salt and shit, back when he didn’t even know what he had done or yet could do. He never remembers when that side of him closes over his head like a wave—but he must have wanted to do it, right? Otherwise, why would he… Vhox presses hard against the wood, listening with single-minded desperation for a scuff, a cough, a footstep. Anything at all to show that Rin is still there, but all Vhox can hear is the deafening cannonade of his own heart. “Can you ‘ear me? Rin, fuck, I need—I need you to open the fuckin’ door, I can’t—”

Please, let him still be there. Let it be that he can hear him but won’t open the door. Let Rin think he’s a monster because he is one, let him leave him in this room to rot like he deserves, as long as he’s not—he’s not—he’s not—

But Vhox knows, in the way of these things, that the floor on the other side of the door is stained with a fluid like pitch. That the air there, too, reeks of salt. That through those windows as well as these streams a red, red sun.

That Rin can’t hear him, because—

“For fuck’s sake, say something! Answer me! Rin—”

. . .

Somewhere else, Vhox lurches upright in a dark, dark room. The blankets snare his legs like a fishing net, like a binding rope; he scrabbles away in blind terror and nearly clocks his skull on the headboard, gulping breaths that yet smell of salt, why does it reek of salt—

“Vhox?” The body in the bed with him stirs, sleep-muddled. Vhox can’t make out any of Rin’s features past the reddish haze that clouds his vision. “Are you all right?”

The monster says, No. It stalks at the very edge of his consciousness, a sharp-toothed, many-legged thing that ever urges: Protect yourself. Let go. Let go. Vhox sinks his nails into his thighs without feeling it, his whole world shrinking to holding the monster at bay in a white-knuckled grip. “Get out.” It comes out too thin, too pleading. “Get out, Rin, I’m—”

Rin sits up. But rather than put the safety of a shut, locked, barred door between them, he shifts closer. Vhox feels a gentle hand brush his shoulder, startlingly cool on his burning hot skin. “You’re not,” says Rin. “You’ve been working with Charlotte, haven’t you? Tell me what she told you to do.”

It’s true that Charlotte has coached him for several moons. Breathe, she always tells him. Deep to your core. Cling to control with both hands if you have to. But how can he cling to it, when he is the monster and the monster is him; how can he breathe past the thorns that snarl in his chest, because Rin is sitting far too close to the part of Vhox that screams in the back of his head, Kill him. Vhox wants to shove him away, but is stopped by the sudden, bloody conviction that he will drive his fist through Rin’s ribs by mistake if he tries. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. Please, Rin, I don’t want to h—I don’t want to hurt you—”

“I know. And you’re not going to.” Rin is still touching him, palm gliding feather-light over his back. “You’re safe. We’re both safe, okay? Now, deep breath and hold it, like you’re going to swim. Can you do that?”

Vhox tries—for Rin’s sake if nothing else. He burns through breath too fast, exhaling roughly, struggling to fill his lungs instead of drawing shallow, whistling sips of the air. But after a few labored attempts, the strangling noose around his neck loosens. Rin waits until he breathes a little easier, then threads his fingers through Vhox’s claw-like ones, still clenched painfully on his thigh. “See? You’re not hurting me,” he says, guiding Vhox’s hand to his face with a confidence and trust that makes Vhox feel more than a little nauseated. He doesn’t dare so much as twitch as Rin skims Vhox’s calloused fingertips over the delicate flesh of his throat, his jaw, his cheek. “You won’t hurt me. You’re safe.”

He isn’t. Yet slowly, very slowly, the monster recedes like the tide, and the fear begins to drain down the scupper.

Rin must feel the first cord of tension release. He climbs into Vhox’s lap and presses flush against him, tucking his head into the space under Vhox’s chin, his skin smooth and bed-warmed, still. Vhox counts down a slowing string of heartbeats before he permits himself to touch him, feeling his way over the knobs of Rin’s spine, the sharp planes of his shoulder blades, the plume of his swishing tail—if Rin was frightened, if he at all considered he might end up with his guts spilled out over the bed for his trouble, he doesn’t otherwise show it. Vhox sighs into the curling strands of Rin’s hair.

There is much Vhox could say to him right now. Do you have a death wish? might be a good place to start. His stomach roils to imagine what he could have done to him; he wants to shout at him, demand to know what the fuck he was thinking to stay within striking range of a monster. But Vhox has done that already, more frequently than he would like to admit. And no matter how many times Vhox jolts awake in the middle of the night on the edge of a cliff, Rin weathers it uncomplaining—the man who bitches and moans when the sheets are the wrong thread count in seedy little Lower Decks taverns, uncomplaining when his sleep is interrupted and his life is threatened, as tender and gracious and kind as anyone has ever been to Vhox.

So Vhox tightens his arms around Rin, and instead, he says, “...Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Rin nuzzles Vhox’s sweat-soaked collarbone with a drowsy affection that turns Vhox’s heart over for entirely different reasons. “Were you having a nightmare?”

“Yeah. But s’nothin’.”

Vhox feels Rin tilt his head back a little as though to look at him, his voice dry. “Are you sure? If that was nothing, I dread to see what something looks like.”

For Vhox, something began when he woke one red Limsan morning to shredded bedsheets and a broken lock. He avoided spending nights with Rin for as long as possible, after that, until at last Rin’s increasingly obvious distress got the better of him and he had been forced to confess to the night terrors he once suffered—and apparently suffered still. And Rin handled it. By the Twelve, did he handle it. He paid for adjacent lodging at inns for a while, then slept perched in chairs when Vhox finally caved to guilt enough to share a room, ever accommodating when he should have been afraid. Why isn’t he? Vhox asks himself, too often, as he remembers how Rin stumbled into that camp a second time, the blood not yet dried on his bandaged arm, and begged for Vhox to come home. He should have been afraid, but wasn’t, because—

Vhox knows the reason. Even if he can’t admit it. Even if he doesn’t believe it, he knows. And though it would be for Rin’s own good to scare him away, though it would make him safe, Vhox can no longer bring himself to hurt him like that again. He is...too weak.

Perhaps it’s selfishness, but he doesn’t want to make Rin as terrified of him as Vhox is of himself.

“I’m sure.” He presses his lips to the crown of Rin’s head, aching in a way that does not bear thinking about too long. “But I’ll finish th’ night on th’ couch. More comfortable there.”

It’s a testament to how badly shaken Vhox must seem that Rin ventures no objections; he only leans up to kiss him properly, then reluctantly lets go. “All right. You’re welcome to come back when your shoulders start complaining about the sofa’s comfort, though.”

Vhox smiles wanly—not that Rin can see that, absent his glasses as he is—and slowly gets out of bed. The floor is cool and slightly damp from the humid air, but nothing more. It’s only when Vhox closes the bedroom door behind him, so that he lingers alone in the shadows and salt-sprayed air of the den, that he feels a disquieting echo...He cracks the door just an ilm, just to make sure he can. “Rin?”

“Yes?”

There is much Vhox could say to him. Thank you, to start. For his presence in his life and his bed, for the roof over his head, for a safe harbor to always return to. He doesn’t know what would have happened to him if Rin had not come back, if he had not reached out to the man and the monster both and said, “You don’t have to live like this. I don’t want you to.” Vhox remembers the domesticity of his dream before it soured, that sweet ambrosia of comfort and refuge, and begins in his heart, I…

No, not yet. Not even to himself.

“G’night,” says Vhox instead, the softness in his voice speaking to what he cannot, and melts away into the dark.

vhox belongs to @mimiorzea still

[mimiorzea]

4, 9, 12, 13, 22, 23, 29, 33 for disaster pirate (3/3)

(in reference to [this ask meme]!)

4) Who is someone they’ve hurt?

who hasn't he tho

while i can't give an exhaustive list, i think the pirate crew that looked after him from mid-childhood to at least his mid-teens or so was probably pretty hurt by the events that took place. my impression is that something happened that accidentally triggered Vhox's feral state, and he killed someone he absolutely did not mean to in the crossfire, which caused all sorts of uproar amidst the crew (which was thereafter divided on their perspectives of Vhox / what they should do in the aftermath), and Vhox cut ties with all of them in the process of bailing -- even those people who he had formed genuine bonds with and who wanted to support him in the fallout. Vhox refused to let them do so, too afraid of the prospect of reaching back out only for something else to go wrong, because emotional investment is scary and fuck all them, anyway, #yolo, he’s fine on his own. it has nothing at all to do with the fact that the entire thing aggravated all of Vhox's fears of abandonment and being a dangerous monster in all of the worst ways. nope.

beyond that, this boy tends to hurt a lot of people in his proximity without necessarily meaning to, so it's likely that Rin suffers a lot for being tied to him, too -- but at least that's something that he ends up trying to work on. he plays best with people he feels like he can't hurt, for some reason or another. Charlotte works well for this, because she's connected to him in a way he can't deny or really run from (as his blood sister), she's got the same problem he's got going on with the feral anomaly, and she's also a strong fighter in her own right, before one considers that she's got the thick skin and experience to recognize a lot of Vhox's shit before Vhox himself might.

9) What is something that would break them emotionally?

accidentally killing someone he really cares about. (i mean, that would probably break most people, but it’s a very present possibility in his mind.) he's so afraid of doing this that he's already more or less sequestered himself away from people beyond very surface-level relationships, so killing someone like Rin would probably push him so far off the deep end that he would either submit to whatever his blood family wants for him (bad news), or completely abandon any future prospect of emotional investment in people while simultaneously discarding his moral compass (also bad news). in the latter case, essentially he would get so stuck in the idea that he is a monster and destined to hurt people that he would stop attempting to moderate his behavior to avoid doing that, thus doing absolutely whatever reckless, harmful, and hedonistic shit he wanted until he either killed himself by "unfortunate happenstance" or was killed by someone else.

12) What is the fastest way to upset them?

see previous question for an extreme case, see following question for a less extreme case. outside of those two situations, some other things that would probably upset him:

obviously wealthy people looking down their nose at or otherwise mistreating less fortunate individuals. bonus points if they were at all capable of helping said less fortunate individuals instead. seeing someone who is obviously struggling and in need of help try to steal food at the market or lift some gil off of a rich merchant, only to be caught and dragged off by the Yellowjackets, really bothers him in a bad way. encountering the mere suggestion of child neglect also upsets him (even if that just amounts to a kid being left unattended on the street). these are both sore spots because they hit close to home, so to speak.

people (most especially authority / law enforcement) who try to control or tell him what he can’t do also rub him the wrong way, although “upset” in this case looks more like becoming suddenly very argumentative / intentionally inflammatory with them, a lot of the time, unless it’s a situation where Vhox would quickly be in over his head for not keeping his mouth shut (and, admittedly, sometimes even then). he has a fairly childish knee-jerk reaction to people treating him negatively to give them even less reason to like him, possibly as an unconscious mechanism to soften the blow of the rejection.

13) What is something that makes them uncomfortable?

talking about gushy uwu feelsy stuff is one thing. he's also not great at commiserating about trauma. if his ever comes up, he's likely to be playing it off with humor or otherwise talking pretty flippantly about it, and if someone else talks to him about theirs, the best they're likely to get is an underwhelming "that's rough, buddy" sort of response. it's not even that he outright doesn't care -- he's just really uncomfortable processing those things, and rolling up his sleeves to have a deep heart-to-heart is a lot more emotionally taxing than having a morbid laugh and moving on to something else.

he's sort of uncomfortable around kids, too. he likes (some of) them and thinks they're cute, but there's always a part of him that's worried that he's going to fuck a kid up somehow, either by saying or doing something wrong, or, gods forbid, something happens to trigger his feral anomaly and he hurts them. that's one of his worst fears.

22) How indecisive are they?

he's very much a "do shit first, ask questions later" kind of guy, so all in all he's pretty decisive -- at least in the moment. if you start asking him to plan things, or where he thinks he's gonna be in 10 years (the answer: facedown in a gutter), etc. then he might give you an answer, but it's liable to change at a moment's notice, so don't put too much stock in it.

23) What do they want most in life?

if you asked him, he'd probably tell you he wants the freedom to do whatever he wants whenever he wants to. part of him is always hung up on the idea of a lucrative job that will pay him so much money that he doesn't have to worry about not having enough for a place to sleep or for a good gourmet meal or whatever else strikes his fancy in a given moment; unfortunately, he's not very wise with money, so even when he does get a moderate chunk of it he can end up spending it all on an evening of lavish entertainment and a lot of booze. he's gotten better at this over time, because experience has taught him that being completely, utterly broke generally leads to an empty stomach and no roof over your head, which is not fun.

the truth is that he needs, and in his heart of hearts wants, stability. he's been absent stability for much of his life (whether that mean stable relationships, stable employment, housing, etc.), and a part of him sorely desires that, even if he's likewise afraid of the idea of being emotionally tied to someone he might hurt (thanks to that pesky "feral" genetic anomaly) or someone who has the power to hurt or abandon him.

29) What do they do to relax?

smoke fogweed, drink alcohol

Vhox is the sort who finds the (calmer) ocean soothing, be it listening to the waves crashing on the shore or lying on a dock that gets rocked by the waves a little. it's an easy shortcut to relaxing him.

33) Do they have a signature accessory?

do weapons count? Vhox is highly uncomfortable without some kind of weapon on his person, be it a gun or at least one knife. every other feature of his attire would be subject to change, i think; he can rotate through clothing surprisingly quickly as a result of damaging it during jobs or whatever other nonsense he gets up to, and although i can see him owning some other accessories at times (necklaces, etc.) it would rarely be anything he’s particularly attached to, and so would be willing to take it off and sell it if he needed a little extra gil.

[idealistsinc]

we interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for some catboyfriends. what happens when nerd meets pirate?

flirting. flirting happens.