Work Text:
‘My Friend,’
‘Pray forgive this abrupt correspondence.’
Aymeric has an awful secret.
‘I must once again extend my condolences for the Scions’ parting of ways. Imagining you braving the New World bereft of your usual company, I cannot help but recall a similar circumstance that crossed our paths what feels like so long ago. Had it not been for the kindness afforded by you and yours, Ishgard may well not be a recognisable home.’
‘For this, you have my unending gratitude, and should you ever seek a reprieve from your travels in favour of a milder (though I hope not so dull as Estinien may lead you to expect) role, you will always have a home in the halls of the Congregation and the Borel household—
His pen halts. He chews his lip.
Laying it on a little thick, perhaps.
‘Although — I am confident in the possibility of Count Edmont’s offense should you decide upon an alternative to your room at Fortemps manor. I’d certainly be hearing about it from Lord Artoirel should I manage to evade his father. Still, I would not be guilted into relinquishing you to your second family when—
The pen halts a second time, bleeding a spreading dot of ink into the middle of his sentence. Aymeric skims his words. Embarrassment courses through him at his lack of subtlety. Thank goodness for draft copies and rehearsed conversations to protect you from his innermost thoughts.
He taps his teeth together. A letter should not be so difficult a task as this. Elected Lord Speaker and yet the right words escape him.
‘I write to invite you to finish our drink.’
‘I would hear about all of your newest journeys, that I might feel a lesser yearning to abandon my post in favour of keeping you company.’
No, that’s too passionate.
‘I would hear of your experiences with your new friends in a strange land. Having heard from Estinien that you had declined a royal request to remain on the far continent in their employ, I believe between myself and your Wuk Lamat, we might find an amusing common ground as heads of state each jilted by a mutual adventurer.’
Too political.
‘I am relieved that you refused such an order. It is with no small amount of jealousy that your ever-expanding roster of friendships inspires in me a panic in which the space I occupy grows smaller as you make room for more.’
Too personal.
Aymeric releases a breath, patience waning as he shifts in his seat, sneering at the parchment now.
Why must it always come to this when he writes you? How is it that he cannot find the words to convey to such a dear friend and ally? You, saviour of his homeland, slayer of his father, solver of his problems. Why must he temper his thoughts so?
He readies the pen on a new line. Steels himself.
It’s merely a draft, after all.
‘This loneliness in the wake of your departure from Ishgard will not wane.’
‘I miss your company.’
‘I long for the sound of your voice.’
‘I dream of you in wakefulness and sleep.’
‘I crave to know the taste of you.’
The wave of shame that washes over him is immediate, curdling in his veins and gathering in a molten pit in his abdomen. A loathed part of him stirs at the crux of his thighs. Aymeric strikes through the sentence as if doing so might banish it from his consciousness.
I crave to know the taste of you.
His free hand catches his temple, cradling his head as he huffs, squeezing his eyes shut as he tries in vain to will away the mounting tightness of his breeches.
Long has he suffered this desire. Each rolling month brings with it the correspondence of yet new adventures had and new friends made. Had he known back when you’d first invited him to join your band that he would find himself so deeply disturbed by his lack of control over the latter, he in all likelihood would have passed the mantle to Artoirel and made off to take part in the former. Alas, the popular vote sealed his fate, and honour binds him to his seat despite prior imaginings of resigning from politics altogether. For the foreseeable future, Aymeric is to remain in his ever-emptying office. Company leaves. Stacks of drafted bills take their place.
Estinien is gone. Lucia is gone. Artoirel busies himself with constituents rather than frequent the Lord Speaker’s office.
There is no longer anyone to keep him company — which, given his current situation — may be a blessing.
Aymeric glances down at his admission:
I crave to know the taste of you.
‘Tis an exceedingly rare venture for him to think such thoughts, let alone express them. No one is present to police nor distract him from the heat pooling in his loins, beckoning an awful temptation he seldom surrenders to. When the dreaded thing stands so painfully to attention beneath the confines of his clothes, Aymeric can barely stand to acknowledge its existence for fear of what might transpire — yet he cannot escape the damp of his underclothes echoing a warning from his own body that it is entirely capable of taking matters into its own hands.
The humiliation is already far too much when he wakes in the night, awash in the sin summoned from dreams of you. The scent of varnish and tea in his chambers overwhelmed with the stench of seed. His cock twitching its victory as it wanes to rest, leaving him to deal with the aftermath staining his nightclothes and his sheets.
Fury take him, should such a thing happen in waking life.
Aymeric sits up against the back of his seat, freed hand reluctantly finding its way beneath the desk in a bid to ease some of the nagging tension. Tragically, just tugging at the seam of his breeches in a last ditch effort to avoid the issue sets his body alight in a terribly delicious tingle that has him shivering.
Palming his testicles through the fabric is as much a relief as it is an ache, and the gentlest squeeze causes his cock to strain, almost in complaint at its lack of attention.
Well, if it cannot be helped…
“Pray Halone, please do not be watching.” The Lord Speaker mutters, thankful at least for the fact that any Halonic statues are confined to the corridors only.
Dropping his pen, he plucks at the finger holes of his glove and draws it down the length of his arm, setting the garment elsewhere on the table. Bare-handed in this office feels akin to being naked, and he hasn’t remotely reached the height of his shame.
He tugs his tunic up to his hips, averting eye-contact with any invisible figure that might haunt the room and fixing his gaze on those awful words he’d written. Fingers tug and push at clasps and buttons until his breeches have loosened their confinement of his genitals. He’s quick to draw his cock out from his underclothes — if only to avoid any further mess staining them — and parts his thighs, angling carefully so as not to risk tainting his uniform.
It near stings to touch, and he can’t help but wince. Aymeric is cautious to gingerly draw his foreskin up, creating a barrier for the oversensitive glans lest he graze it by accident and let slip a shout that would no doubt have the guards piling into the lift to rush to his faux aid.
It ought to be a testament to the strength of his constitution; a stubborn devoutness that remains in the face of all that has come into question regarding the entirety of Ishgard’s structures. Under the rule of the Archbishop, all church authorities — including those who represented its senior military body — were forbidden by law from wedding, procreating, or fraternising. Of course, Aymeric would not be here were it not for Thordan VII’s temptation that brought him into the world, but despite what was once illegal for him now being allowed, he’s not been so quick to cast away his chastity as a proud knight.
At this point, however, Aymeric has to admit: the reluctance has become less about Halone and more about an aversion to being no better than the previous head-of-state who sired him.
To reduce the thought of you to selfish, fleeting pleasure…he cannot bear to imagine it. After all he has asked of you — after all that you have done for him in the name of goodness and friendship, how could he possibly commit such an offence?
No, even in his dreams, he could not objectify you so.
How does he do this, then? He has little to imagine from his own experience. It’s difficult enough for him to observe his own naked body let alone to have stolen glances at the odd knight who might still be washing in the stalls after the graveyard shift. Had you visited more recently, he might have been able to do this without conjuring such thoughts. A familiar smile and your scent in your wake, even; enveloping him one last time before you set off once more, trailed by company he might otherwise have been a part of.
He cannot lie. There is no small amount of envy that comes with being reminded of Estinien’s newfound place at your side. Even after the disbandment of the Scions, his dearest friend walks an adventurer’s path that too-often intersects with your own, free from that which had once tortured his existence, free to act as he pleases without drawing the ire of the Fury, ignoring all attempts from the Lord Speaker to return to Ishgardian employment lest his never-ending travels with you grow into something Aymeric cannot bear to fathom.
Aymeric has to reassure himself. He’s known Estinien since boyhood. The man would sooner bring his company a freshly gutted carcass to sleep in than offer his own body heat no matter his degree of fondness.
Then, paranoia tingles up the back of Aymeric’s neck. Things could change. All it might take is one slip of fortitude, just like this one.
There is no way he can in good conscience fancy himself as the object of your attentions. Perhaps just this once, he would marry jealousy with fantasy. An elezen man with a face not his own skims close enough to his likeness to thrill, but not so much that it repels him morally.
Closing his thumb and middle finger around the wet, barely-sheathed head of his cock, Aymeric closes his eyes and conjures your image in his dear friend’s embrace.
One bed roll shared. One abandoned. Hides shifting beneath your body while Estinien crawls over you in the quiet of the night.
Envy boils in his gut. Arousal even more so as his fingers pull down just slightly, rotating with experimental little motions until his breaths are shaking in his chest. Flames of guilt and pleasure lick from his core outward, pulling him forward to lean over his desk. His forearm holds him steady on the table top. Glove creaking as he continues to work himself, thankful for his foresight in removing the other. Warm, viscous pre-cum eagerly dribbles over his fingers, further lubricating his ministrations, beckoning him to venture further into this fantasy.
A breath catches in his throat when Estinien’s head dips to your clavicle, hidden behind the curtain of messy hair but no doubt kissing your skin. Aymeric draws his bottom lip beneath his teeth, imagining the taste for himself. Sensitivity begins to wane. His body eggs him on, and he acquiesces, wrapping his fingers around his shaft. Spreading cloudy, needy pre-cum up and down the length of his cock and stifling a shuddering sigh.
Thank goodness he’s close.
The more the Lord Speaker carries on, however, the more difficult it is to hold that strict image projected on the backs of his eyelids. Surging pleasure hazes his thoughts, and the moment his eyes crack open, the buffer slips. Estinien evaporates from the scene. All he is left with is an increasingly hurtling momentum toward his end, barely retaining enough control over himself to cover his gasps behind his cupped hand.
A new image flashes in his mind. Tangled with the reality before him. His knees beneath the desk, and you between them.
Aymeric’s shoulders seize. His toes curl in his boots.
Your mouth closes in on him, and his cock strains in his grip, warning.
“O-oh gods — oh gods —…” He chokes under his breath, surrendering completely to this fantasy of you. Giving himself over to an orgasm that has him muffling a groan into the palm of his gloved hand, body shuttering, doubling forward as molten heat spills forth.
The underside of his desk is licked with a ribbon of seed. The following pulses throb through the length of him, splattering the hardwood floor until the peak subsides, loosening its hold. Aymeric’s hand slows, nursing himself as the last remaining drops of semen drip thickly between his feet, joining the pooling mess.
He doesn’t dare look. He releases himself, grimacing as cum-drenched fingers scrunch into the draft parchment, smearing and erasing embarrassing passages with even more shame. The waste bin by his desk goes unfilled. He’ll ensure to deposit this letter into a fireplace on his way out, but in the meantime…
Aymeric’s gaze drops to the fresh parchment that lie beneath, and after a moment’s consideration, he finds himself in a moment of clarity.
Plucking the pen back up off the desk, the Lord Speaker brandishes it between his fingers, hovering over the page.
‘My Friend,’