FicWad

Honey/Vinegar

"Maester Seymour would like a word with you." Kinoc (for even in thought Auron could not appropriate the title of Maester upon the man) smiled mildly, his pig-like features serene as he halted Tidus. "Not you, boy. He wants to speak with Auron." He said his old friend's name like it tasted foul.

Kinoc thrilled a little as the legendary guardian heeded him wordlessly. For once in their friendship, Kinoc was the better one. Kinoc was Maester, at the helm of the same brotherhood with which both men had trained. Kinoc was even flanked by some of them as he led the weaponless guardian from his cell. Kinoc trusted only the strongest and most loyal monks to guard him. In a different world, Kinoc may have bestowed the honor upon Auron. But that was not where the roads had led. In this world, the man who had once questioned even the great Maester Kinoc's piousness was now preparing to defend himself against charges of treason. And Kinoc savored it. There was a word he learned once, in his monastic literary training. Irony. Yes, that was it. Kinoc's eyes sparkled.

"Thank you Maester Kinoc. You may leave now. I will deal with the prisoner myself." Kinoc deflated a little a little as he left -he had hoped to witness whatever torment there was to deal.

Seymour turned to Auron. "Sir." He curved his clawed fingers in the Yevonite motion of prayer, knowing exactly what the loaded gesture meant to the older man. "It is an honor as usual." Auron raged.

"Why am I here?" Auron spoke without moving his jaw.

"Negotiations."

"Hmph."

"Yuna's cause is doomed, Sir. Surely someone as keen as yourself can see that. Fate -/Yevon/ is against them. They are young. Idealistic fools floundering without a plan. You know better than that, don't you?" He unleashed each word with a kiss. "We know better." Seymour neared, taking in Auron's smell greedily. The smell was so vivid and lovely, of man and death. He remembered his teen years in Guadosalam, furtively watching women recall their dead lovers from the farplane. Regardless of Guado taboo, dead men intoxicated Seymour. And Sir Auron was a man, a thousand times over and very certainly dead. "I want you to help me kill them." Auron stirred slightly as Seymour calmly continued. "All of them. And by doing so we may end it. End suffering. End the cycle of sacrifice. Yes. We have the same goal, Sir Guardian But I have a plan, and means to enact it." He moved closer still, allowing one of his stiff forelocks to catch on the ungroomed stubble of Auron's cheek. He inhaled. The scent of two planes. Two worlds. So much like himself. Driven, torn and regal. Dead.

"Death is no release from suffering." Auron's retort came in resounding cracks as if the very ice of Macalania was breaking.

"You suffer because you allow yourself to suffer, Sir Auron. You have already lost the battle you are fighting. You lost it a decade ago. The man who guarded High Summoner Braska is irrelevant. Let him go. Serve me, Auron."

Auron's restraint buckled slightly. His face went scarlet and his knuckles, white. He twitched, and Seymour saw it. Seymour cast his strongest spells gently and with precision, like a bow pushed across the strings of a viol. Auron's blood turned to ice and his bones, to steel. Petrified. Auron would rather endure three rounds of double-cast Ultima than a moment of Petrify. Seymour, of course, knew this. He licked his lips and circled the guardian slowly. The man was beautiful. Solid. Tall, for human standards. Seymour was finding it more difficult to keep himself.

"You were not considering attacking me? Forgive me, Sir Auron. I am certain you would not bring undue peril and pain to yourself or others by doing something so rash. Wise man such as yourself."

Auron fell slack as the spell faded with a motion of Seymour's fingers. Yet Auron was still, hesitant to even breathe. Seymour could do that again, and worse. Auron had no sword and no offensive magic.

"You think me a villain, no doubt." Seymour placed a hand on Auron's shoulder and slid one blue nail under the hem of Auron's robe. "But I do this all only out of love." With a flick of the finger, Seymour brushed the robe from Auron's shoulder, revealing a handsome and bare sword arm, still tucked in defensively at his waist. The half-Guado ran his claws down the firm texture of the guardian's muscles, which, to Seymour's delight, tightened and goosefleshed under his touch. Could the legendary warrior be enjoying this? He looked at the elder man's face which stood stoic as a summoner's statue, save the frantically flexing muscle of his jaw. Ah well. Cooperation had always been secondary to Seymour's designs. He knew what he wanted. Seymour stooped to address the thick belt that held the man in. He paused. "Auron. Remove your clothes."

Auron went as pale as a sick man. However. Eyes fixed on the horizon, looking past his captor, Auron began to work the buckles of his belt, which soon slipped down his hips to his feet. His glove, too. Then his robe. He stepped out of his boots. Seymour sighed. The guardian was too quick and efficient. No art to it. He grasped Auron's arm, which was already unclasping his leather chest armor. "Let me." Seymour hissed, his voice as reptilian as his grasp.

Seymour ran his long hands over the well-worn hide. Years of sweat and use had shaped the stiff black garment to Auron's sleek torso. Somehow, Seymour wasn't surprised to feel a strong throbbing beat under the armor. It was drumming frantically as a hunted animal, but still a heartbeat. Even swathed in the musk of ten years of death, Auron was still Auron. To retain one's selfhood this long was rare, and Sir Auron was certainly a rare man.

Seymour ran a hand along the metal clasps. He began to undo them, commenting as he unclasped each.

"This one is for the boy who survived the destruction of his village and wept only once as he watched the summoner dancing away the souls of his parents." Clack. Seymour had studied the man for a long, long time.

"This one is for the novice monk who swore to kill and die for his beliefs." Clack.

"This one is for the promising young Yevonite excommunicated for his refusal to wed a woman he did not love." Clack.

"This one is for a optionless and disillusioned young man selfishly and seriously considering plunging his own sword into his own stomach." Clack. Auron felt the blood hurl against the wall of his heart like a penned-up enraged bull. How could Seymour know possibly know that?

"This one is for a guardian setting out on a foolish pilgrimage with an dishonored summoner and a delusional drunkard." Clack.

"This is for the young man surveying the peak of Zanarkand with the arrogance of one that believed he could change the world." Clack. Most of Auron's stomach was exposed now and he felt the familiar chilly and humid air of the Bevelle palace.

"This is for the man who faltered on that sacred peak, burdened with questions and doubts." Clack.

"This is for the man who lived as the ones he had sworn to protect died before him." Clack. Seymour's pace quickened as more of Auron's muscled stomach and chest was exposed.

"This is for the man who could not accept their deaths." Clack. Seymour felt himself hardening under his holy robes.

"This is for the man who attempted to murder the daughter of Yevon." Clack. Auron's stomach squirmed like a mass of fly larvae.

"This is for the man who died an undignified failure in the arms of a panicking teenaged Ronso." Clack.

The armor slid off him like water. This was becoming unbearable. Seymour went for the warrior's trousers. He smiled at the size of the ex-monk's manhood below the dark spirals of hair. Not at all disappointing for a pure-blooded human.

Seymour pushed his fingers hard against Auron's shoulder, drawing blood as he raked the over his chest, slowly southward toward increasingly sensitive skin. Auron was silent, falling back on his monastic trainings. Silence hides weakness. The stinging pain was negligible; that was not the problem.

Auron jerked as the half-Guado slid one white hand around the shaft of his penis, lingering briefly at the nerve-filled head. "/Love/, Auron. I do this out of love." A snake-like tongue flicked out from between his cerulean lips and explored the hardening surface.

Auron pulled away. With exaggerated breathes, he attempted to ground himself. Pleasure had no place in his existence, let alone a pilgrimage. Seymour himself was nothing but a distraction from the pilgrimage; a fly that must be swatted away.

Seymour undid his robes then, easily. He smiled proudly. He bore lovely silver-blue Guado markings on his lower abdomen, and his genitalia was of the usual formidable Guado size, barbed with the usual Guado ridges. In the days before the race's conversion to Yevon, the Guado had been fetishized among Yevonites for these exotic features.

He approached Auron, tracing the slight line that split his sculpted chest, settling on the knobs of his pelvic bone. "Surely you've done this before, Sir Monk? With Jecht? Perhaps Braska? Three young men must get lonely." He lost his breath then, at the feel of Auron's lean buttocks against his cock. He smelled so good. Seymour had males before, but never a dead one. Anything of beauty or goodness in Spira is dead. Gripping Auron's hips firmly, he leaned the warrior monk over and started to slip in the head of his cock. Oh Yevon. Perhaps the monk hadn't done this before. He pushed his way in further, feeling resistance of Guado barbs give way to tiny tears. Volcanic and involuntary, Auron stiffened every muscle and rattled with a hoarse shriek. Any remnant of pleasure for Auron was gone. Seymour knew he was hurting the other man, but he had long since surpassed sympathy, in exchange for the fiendlike vitality in his death.

If the legendary guardian wouldn't serve him, he would enjoy him as he would. Seymour thrust again, this time grasping a fistful of the elder man's long grey-black hair. Auron staggered under the force and pain, feeling small trails of hot blood down his inner thighs. Seymour jerked Auron's head around to face him. "Do not forget, Sir Guardian I offered you honey." He spoke in a voice graveled and distorted by pleasure. "But it seems you prefer vinegar."