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karthurcontest entry.
Oct. 20th, 2008 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seikilosTitle: Going On
Fandom: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: ...Dunno, really. Gen with sex?
Rating: PG-13?
Words: 2338
Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of the Abyss
Summary: Peony and Jade have a well-needed conversation after the events of the end of the game.
Spoilers? For the entire game.
Author's Notes: I've been writing this all month, in my writing notebook before class and while waiting for people to log onto AIM. I've had the idea since last December, and while this had to morph a bit to fit the requirements ofkarthurcontest (the theme was "happiness" and the rating had to be PG-13 or lower), I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I seriously love the relationship between Peony and Jade.
This is both friendship and involves sex, but I don't think it's a shippy fic. It's not intended to be, anyway. So yeah.
If Peony were an ordinary man, he would have grabbed a bottle of wine and simply showed up at Jade's house, completely uninvited. Jade would have doubtless sighed to see him standing on his front step, but would have let him in anyway, and the two of them would have spent an evening making a good dent in the aforementioned bottle, talking about anything that came to mind.
Being an emperor made that a bit tricky. Emperors were notoriously bad at spontaneity.
Instead, Peony dropped by Jade's office (it was much closer than his house, and so only one guard was required), and asked him if he'd mind stopping by his chambers later that night—asked, not told. There was a difference there, one he couldn't forget. As much as he wanted to see Jade that night, he had to leave it up to him.
It wasn't just because Jade tended to treat orders as suggestions, either. His father had been the sort of man who would command his friends to visit, to spend time with him, to do him favours. As might be expected, his father hadn't had many friends.
Peony did not want to be his father's son, and so, he'd asked: Did Jade want to meet him that night for a few drinks?
Jade did. Peony, then, at the end of the day, sent for a bottle of wine to be delivered to his chambers. He'd requested Jade's favourite, since Peony wasn't really a wine man; beer was more his style. Or it would have been, he liked to think, if the people in charge of stocking the palace's drinks wouldn't have passed out in sheer horror at having such a beverage within their walls.
Then, his work done, he'd gone to the rooms in which emperors had been born, lived, and died for centuries to wait for his childhood friend to visit. He dismissed the maids, a couple of whom looked glad to be leaving—a hint that his rappigs had been acting up again. A second hint was the way three of them stampeded up to him when he entered the room.
Grinning, he knelt, stroking short fur and submitting to being prodded with wet noses. “Okay, guys, settle down, or Jade's going to take one look at you and head for the door.” He tousled the long ears of the cute little Jade and added, “He's not all that fond of you in the first place, after all.”
After receiving sufficient attention, Gelda wandered off towards his bedroom, leaving the cute little Jade and Aslan to crowd around his legs, occasionally bumping at him affectionately. Well used to having the animals underfoot, Peony didn't so much as stumble as he wandered around his chambers, picking up this and examining that as he waited for Jade to arrive.
Sometime later, over the soft noises of his pets, Peony heard a knock.
“Come in,” he called, assuming correctly it was Jade. His friend knew very well he didn't need to knock—Peony never did when he visited him at his office—but it looked like he was trying to make a point. Trying, but not succeeding, since Peony was ignoring it.
“Your Majesty,” Jade greeted him, entering the small side room. He sighed as Aslan and the cute little Jade detached themselves to examine him.
“Evening, Jade,” Peony replied, amused at the put-upon expression on Jade's face. “How was work today?”
“Fine. I suddenly became far more productive once you'd left,” Jade said in that special tone of voice of his as he seated himself at a small round table with two chairs.
“Funny, that.” He headed for the next room and returned with the wine bottle in one hand and a pair of glasses in the other. “Feel like some?”
“Yes, that would be good.” Jade lifted his eyebrows and added, “Though you're going to need a bottle opener.”
“Knew I forgot something.”
Once the bottle was opened and the drink had been poured, Peony draped himself in his chair. Nephry trotted over and lay down on his feet. He slipped his feet out from under her—rappigs were heavy and his feet would be asleep in no time if he let her stay.
“To what do I owe the honour of this invitation?” Jade asked, then tasted his wine. He made what Peony knew was a pleased noise, though doubtless it would seem as though he considered the wine merely adequate to anyone else.
Peony shrugged. “I thought it'd be nice to talk when you weren't at work, since you don't seem to appreciate it.” The smile he'd been wearing changed, just a bit. “We haven't had much of a chance to sit down together since you got back from Eldrant.”
“Mm.” Jade swirled the wine in his glass. “Yes, we've both been busy, haven't we?”
“Yeah. Van sure didn't make it easy on us.” Peony's gaze was on his own drink. “We're planning a memorial service for the victims of Akzeriuth already. People want to make it a big affair. Someone will probably be contacting you to give a speech or something, as one of the only survivors.”
“And if I don't want to?” Jade's voice was just a bit sharper than usual.
Peony gave him a lopsided smile. “You think anyone can make you do what you don't want to? Go ahead and send them packing. I'll tell them to go talk to Anise—if she's going to be the next Fon Master like you said, she's going to need to be seen in public a lot.”
“Although that may not be the opportunity she's looking for,” Jade pointed out. “What about Guy?”
He looked at Jade, gaze steady. “I thought about him, but he's had a rough time lately. Sending one of the only survivors of Hod to talk about the destruction of another town probably wouldn't be the smartest thing to do.”
“Indeed.”
“What?” he asked, not sure what had earned him the thoughtful gaze that had ensued.
“It's nothing.” Jade took a sip of wine. After a moment, Peony shrugged and did the same.
“This memorial service,” Jade said abruptly, after a moment of more or less companionable silence. “Will representatives from Kimlasca be there?”
“Don't know yet,” was Peony's reply. “I sent a formal invitation a couple of days ago, but it'll be a while before I get a reply. Why?”
“You do know King Ingobert is likely to accept.” Jade set down his glass and looked at him, gaze unyielding. “What will you do when the two of you are required to appear side-by-side on friendly terms?”
“I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.” When his friend did not look away, clearly unsatisfied, he cupped his chin in his hand. “Jade, you guys changed the future predicted in the Score, including the Planet Score. I was supposed to die and Ingobert was supposed to be in charge of the soldiers responsible. Now it's not going to happen, so that's that.” He sighed. “Come on, man. You know we've been over this too many times.”
“Yes. I do know.”
The two friends shared a look, red and cynical meeting blue and resigned.
Peony tried to lighten the situation as he always did, saying, “All right, Jade, I didn't invite you here so the two of us could sit around moping about my supposed death. Drink up and let's talk about better things.”
“Such as?” Jade sipped his drink.
“Oh, I don't know. How's your research going? And before you say anything, I know—much better if I didn't pester you all the time,” he added.
“I don't know what you mean, Your Majesty.” Jade was the picture of innocence.
Peony lifted his eyebrows. “Right, right. So how is it, anyway?”
“Fine. I find myself in the unique position of having to read my own books to remind myself of some of the more complex points of fomicry.” His smile was wry. “It amuses my fellow researchers to no end, as you might imagine.”
“I bet.” It sure was amusing him. “Making any progress, or are you still playing catch-up?”
Now it was Jade's turn to set his chin on his hand. “For all that human replication has been illegal for years, the field has still been advanced in secret. It will be some time before I'll be ready to make a significant contribution.”
“How are you going to go about researching that, anyway? You're not planning on making more replicas, are you?”
Despite asking, he was sure he knew the answer. He trusted Jade with his life (and had done so literally on more than one occasion), but he needed to hear the next reply in Jade's voice.
“Of course not.” The other man gave him a sharp look. “Researching the theory doesn't necessarily mean putting it into practice.”
“Yeah, I know.” He took another drink of his wine.
There was another silence between them, broken by Nephry's snores. Peony nudged the sleeping rappig with his foot, but it didn't do much to quiet her. He then turned his gaze from below the table to Jade's face; after a moment, the other man lifted his eyes from his wine.
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“When are you planning on mourning Luke?” Peony asked bluntly.
“I'm sorry?” Jade's tone was mild, but Peony knew his expression was a warning.
He ignored it. “As soon as you got back from Eldrant, you went right back to work, and you've been working ever since.”
“I've been forced to neglect my work for far too long. I can't simply pretend it doesn't exist.” Jade sipped his wine, the glass a barrier between them.
“You're trying to forget what happened by keeping yourself busy. Take it from one who knows, man: it doesn't work.” Peony crossed his arms, his gaze steady on Jade's face. “Give yourself a chance to deal with what happened. You don't have to be a heartless bastard all the time.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Jade's tone was dry, but there was an odd twist to it. His voice wasn't as firm as it usually was, and there was no way Peony was missing that.
“Go, I don't know, go beat the crap out of a training dummy or kick a hole in your wall or go off somewhere and yell your lungs out. Something like that. Or go get drunk—hell, we can do it right now.” He lifted his wine glass in emphasis. “I wouldn't mind helping you. I'm going to miss that kid,” he added, suddenly subdued.
Jade lifted an eyebrow, a gesture he'd practiced since childhood. “Oh? Is this what you do to deal with loss, Your Majesty?”
Peony's smile was tired. “I'm good at giving advice, Jade. I'm not so great at taking it.”
“It seems we share that trait,” Jade said quietly, distantly.
Sensing the change in Jade's mood, Peony's next words were soft, taking care not to destroy what he'd put a lot of effort into creating. “You need to mourn him and move on. If you don't, you'll never be happy—well, as happy as a miserable clod like you can ever be,” he added out of habit.
Jade made a brief sound of amusement. “We'll see.” His gaze was on the glossy wood of the table, but Peony knew he was looking at something else entirely.
Peony rose from his seat and walked over to the other side of the table. “Jade.”
Jade looked up at him. “Yes, Your Majesty?”
Peony bent over and kissed him softly. For a moment, Jade's lips remained still beneath his, and then they moved, barely.
His oldest friend pulled back slightly. “What about Lady Clara? She would be crushed if she saw you now.”
Peony smiled a bit. He wasn't quite sure why. “She told me she was done yesterday. She's looking for a husband and she knows I'm not it.”
“Clever woman.”
Peony didn't make a remark about clever Clara being his type, not to the man whose brilliant sister he had nearly married. Instead, he kissed Jade again, long and slow. After a moment, Jade rose but kept his arms at his side.
Peony put his hands on the taller man's shoulders. “Come on, Jade. Let go.”
Jade sighed. It was not a sound of a man put-upon, but of a man releasing a portion of his constant tension. His arms circled loosely around Peony's waist.
One of Peony's hands slipped up to cradle the back of Jade's head; the other moved to between his shoulder blades. “That's more like it.”
Jade leaned down and Peony rose on the balls of his feet, and the kiss went on for some time. When Jade withdrew again, it was only to murmur one word: “. . . Peony.”
“Come on.” Peony cupped Jade's cheek in his hand. “We can get drunk later. Let's do this while we're still sober enough to find each other.”
Jade closed his eyes and smiled. “Very well.”
*
They didn't get drunk, afterwards, and there was still wine left in the bottle when Jade got up to leave. Peony offered him a guest room in the palace, but Jade refused. He kissed him, then departed, hands in his pockets, leaving Peony to watch from the door to his chambers. He smiled a bit, then turned back to his room.
He doubted Jade was going to take his advice, which—wasn't great, but Peony wasn't going to let himself worry. The two of them had survived this far. They'd keep surviving.
His gaze landed briefly on the partly finished bottle of wine on the table before he moved past it, heading for his bedroom. Better to get a good night's rest. That way, he could get a start on his own mourning and, just maybe in the end find as much happiness as an unwilling emperor ever could.
Stranger things had happened, and they'd even happened to him.
Fandom: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: ...Dunno, really. Gen with sex?
Rating: PG-13?
Words: 2338
Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of the Abyss
Summary: Peony and Jade have a well-needed conversation after the events of the end of the game.
Spoilers? For the entire game.
Author's Notes: I've been writing this all month, in my writing notebook before class and while waiting for people to log onto AIM. I've had the idea since last December, and while this had to morph a bit to fit the requirements of
karthurcontest (the theme was "happiness" and the rating had to be PG-13 or lower), I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I seriously love the relationship between Peony and Jade.This is both friendship and involves sex, but I don't think it's a shippy fic. It's not intended to be, anyway. So yeah.
If Peony were an ordinary man, he would have grabbed a bottle of wine and simply showed up at Jade's house, completely uninvited. Jade would have doubtless sighed to see him standing on his front step, but would have let him in anyway, and the two of them would have spent an evening making a good dent in the aforementioned bottle, talking about anything that came to mind.
Being an emperor made that a bit tricky. Emperors were notoriously bad at spontaneity.
Instead, Peony dropped by Jade's office (it was much closer than his house, and so only one guard was required), and asked him if he'd mind stopping by his chambers later that night—asked, not told. There was a difference there, one he couldn't forget. As much as he wanted to see Jade that night, he had to leave it up to him.
It wasn't just because Jade tended to treat orders as suggestions, either. His father had been the sort of man who would command his friends to visit, to spend time with him, to do him favours. As might be expected, his father hadn't had many friends.
Peony did not want to be his father's son, and so, he'd asked: Did Jade want to meet him that night for a few drinks?
Jade did. Peony, then, at the end of the day, sent for a bottle of wine to be delivered to his chambers. He'd requested Jade's favourite, since Peony wasn't really a wine man; beer was more his style. Or it would have been, he liked to think, if the people in charge of stocking the palace's drinks wouldn't have passed out in sheer horror at having such a beverage within their walls.
Then, his work done, he'd gone to the rooms in which emperors had been born, lived, and died for centuries to wait for his childhood friend to visit. He dismissed the maids, a couple of whom looked glad to be leaving—a hint that his rappigs had been acting up again. A second hint was the way three of them stampeded up to him when he entered the room.
Grinning, he knelt, stroking short fur and submitting to being prodded with wet noses. “Okay, guys, settle down, or Jade's going to take one look at you and head for the door.” He tousled the long ears of the cute little Jade and added, “He's not all that fond of you in the first place, after all.”
After receiving sufficient attention, Gelda wandered off towards his bedroom, leaving the cute little Jade and Aslan to crowd around his legs, occasionally bumping at him affectionately. Well used to having the animals underfoot, Peony didn't so much as stumble as he wandered around his chambers, picking up this and examining that as he waited for Jade to arrive.
Sometime later, over the soft noises of his pets, Peony heard a knock.
“Come in,” he called, assuming correctly it was Jade. His friend knew very well he didn't need to knock—Peony never did when he visited him at his office—but it looked like he was trying to make a point. Trying, but not succeeding, since Peony was ignoring it.
“Your Majesty,” Jade greeted him, entering the small side room. He sighed as Aslan and the cute little Jade detached themselves to examine him.
“Evening, Jade,” Peony replied, amused at the put-upon expression on Jade's face. “How was work today?”
“Fine. I suddenly became far more productive once you'd left,” Jade said in that special tone of voice of his as he seated himself at a small round table with two chairs.
“Funny, that.” He headed for the next room and returned with the wine bottle in one hand and a pair of glasses in the other. “Feel like some?”
“Yes, that would be good.” Jade lifted his eyebrows and added, “Though you're going to need a bottle opener.”
“Knew I forgot something.”
Once the bottle was opened and the drink had been poured, Peony draped himself in his chair. Nephry trotted over and lay down on his feet. He slipped his feet out from under her—rappigs were heavy and his feet would be asleep in no time if he let her stay.
“To what do I owe the honour of this invitation?” Jade asked, then tasted his wine. He made what Peony knew was a pleased noise, though doubtless it would seem as though he considered the wine merely adequate to anyone else.
Peony shrugged. “I thought it'd be nice to talk when you weren't at work, since you don't seem to appreciate it.” The smile he'd been wearing changed, just a bit. “We haven't had much of a chance to sit down together since you got back from Eldrant.”
“Mm.” Jade swirled the wine in his glass. “Yes, we've both been busy, haven't we?”
“Yeah. Van sure didn't make it easy on us.” Peony's gaze was on his own drink. “We're planning a memorial service for the victims of Akzeriuth already. People want to make it a big affair. Someone will probably be contacting you to give a speech or something, as one of the only survivors.”
“And if I don't want to?” Jade's voice was just a bit sharper than usual.
Peony gave him a lopsided smile. “You think anyone can make you do what you don't want to? Go ahead and send them packing. I'll tell them to go talk to Anise—if she's going to be the next Fon Master like you said, she's going to need to be seen in public a lot.”
“Although that may not be the opportunity she's looking for,” Jade pointed out. “What about Guy?”
He looked at Jade, gaze steady. “I thought about him, but he's had a rough time lately. Sending one of the only survivors of Hod to talk about the destruction of another town probably wouldn't be the smartest thing to do.”
“Indeed.”
“What?” he asked, not sure what had earned him the thoughtful gaze that had ensued.
“It's nothing.” Jade took a sip of wine. After a moment, Peony shrugged and did the same.
“This memorial service,” Jade said abruptly, after a moment of more or less companionable silence. “Will representatives from Kimlasca be there?”
“Don't know yet,” was Peony's reply. “I sent a formal invitation a couple of days ago, but it'll be a while before I get a reply. Why?”
“You do know King Ingobert is likely to accept.” Jade set down his glass and looked at him, gaze unyielding. “What will you do when the two of you are required to appear side-by-side on friendly terms?”
“I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.” When his friend did not look away, clearly unsatisfied, he cupped his chin in his hand. “Jade, you guys changed the future predicted in the Score, including the Planet Score. I was supposed to die and Ingobert was supposed to be in charge of the soldiers responsible. Now it's not going to happen, so that's that.” He sighed. “Come on, man. You know we've been over this too many times.”
“Yes. I do know.”
The two friends shared a look, red and cynical meeting blue and resigned.
Peony tried to lighten the situation as he always did, saying, “All right, Jade, I didn't invite you here so the two of us could sit around moping about my supposed death. Drink up and let's talk about better things.”
“Such as?” Jade sipped his drink.
“Oh, I don't know. How's your research going? And before you say anything, I know—much better if I didn't pester you all the time,” he added.
“I don't know what you mean, Your Majesty.” Jade was the picture of innocence.
Peony lifted his eyebrows. “Right, right. So how is it, anyway?”
“Fine. I find myself in the unique position of having to read my own books to remind myself of some of the more complex points of fomicry.” His smile was wry. “It amuses my fellow researchers to no end, as you might imagine.”
“I bet.” It sure was amusing him. “Making any progress, or are you still playing catch-up?”
Now it was Jade's turn to set his chin on his hand. “For all that human replication has been illegal for years, the field has still been advanced in secret. It will be some time before I'll be ready to make a significant contribution.”
“How are you going to go about researching that, anyway? You're not planning on making more replicas, are you?”
Despite asking, he was sure he knew the answer. He trusted Jade with his life (and had done so literally on more than one occasion), but he needed to hear the next reply in Jade's voice.
“Of course not.” The other man gave him a sharp look. “Researching the theory doesn't necessarily mean putting it into practice.”
“Yeah, I know.” He took another drink of his wine.
There was another silence between them, broken by Nephry's snores. Peony nudged the sleeping rappig with his foot, but it didn't do much to quiet her. He then turned his gaze from below the table to Jade's face; after a moment, the other man lifted his eyes from his wine.
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“When are you planning on mourning Luke?” Peony asked bluntly.
“I'm sorry?” Jade's tone was mild, but Peony knew his expression was a warning.
He ignored it. “As soon as you got back from Eldrant, you went right back to work, and you've been working ever since.”
“I've been forced to neglect my work for far too long. I can't simply pretend it doesn't exist.” Jade sipped his wine, the glass a barrier between them.
“You're trying to forget what happened by keeping yourself busy. Take it from one who knows, man: it doesn't work.” Peony crossed his arms, his gaze steady on Jade's face. “Give yourself a chance to deal with what happened. You don't have to be a heartless bastard all the time.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Jade's tone was dry, but there was an odd twist to it. His voice wasn't as firm as it usually was, and there was no way Peony was missing that.
“Go, I don't know, go beat the crap out of a training dummy or kick a hole in your wall or go off somewhere and yell your lungs out. Something like that. Or go get drunk—hell, we can do it right now.” He lifted his wine glass in emphasis. “I wouldn't mind helping you. I'm going to miss that kid,” he added, suddenly subdued.
Jade lifted an eyebrow, a gesture he'd practiced since childhood. “Oh? Is this what you do to deal with loss, Your Majesty?”
Peony's smile was tired. “I'm good at giving advice, Jade. I'm not so great at taking it.”
“It seems we share that trait,” Jade said quietly, distantly.
Sensing the change in Jade's mood, Peony's next words were soft, taking care not to destroy what he'd put a lot of effort into creating. “You need to mourn him and move on. If you don't, you'll never be happy—well, as happy as a miserable clod like you can ever be,” he added out of habit.
Jade made a brief sound of amusement. “We'll see.” His gaze was on the glossy wood of the table, but Peony knew he was looking at something else entirely.
Peony rose from his seat and walked over to the other side of the table. “Jade.”
Jade looked up at him. “Yes, Your Majesty?”
Peony bent over and kissed him softly. For a moment, Jade's lips remained still beneath his, and then they moved, barely.
His oldest friend pulled back slightly. “What about Lady Clara? She would be crushed if she saw you now.”
Peony smiled a bit. He wasn't quite sure why. “She told me she was done yesterday. She's looking for a husband and she knows I'm not it.”
“Clever woman.”
Peony didn't make a remark about clever Clara being his type, not to the man whose brilliant sister he had nearly married. Instead, he kissed Jade again, long and slow. After a moment, Jade rose but kept his arms at his side.
Peony put his hands on the taller man's shoulders. “Come on, Jade. Let go.”
Jade sighed. It was not a sound of a man put-upon, but of a man releasing a portion of his constant tension. His arms circled loosely around Peony's waist.
One of Peony's hands slipped up to cradle the back of Jade's head; the other moved to between his shoulder blades. “That's more like it.”
Jade leaned down and Peony rose on the balls of his feet, and the kiss went on for some time. When Jade withdrew again, it was only to murmur one word: “. . . Peony.”
“Come on.” Peony cupped Jade's cheek in his hand. “We can get drunk later. Let's do this while we're still sober enough to find each other.”
Jade closed his eyes and smiled. “Very well.”
They didn't get drunk, afterwards, and there was still wine left in the bottle when Jade got up to leave. Peony offered him a guest room in the palace, but Jade refused. He kissed him, then departed, hands in his pockets, leaving Peony to watch from the door to his chambers. He smiled a bit, then turned back to his room.
He doubted Jade was going to take his advice, which—wasn't great, but Peony wasn't going to let himself worry. The two of them had survived this far. They'd keep surviving.
His gaze landed briefly on the partly finished bottle of wine on the table before he moved past it, heading for his bedroom. Better to get a good night's rest. That way, he could get a start on his own mourning and, just maybe in the end find as much happiness as an unwilling emperor ever could.
Stranger things had happened, and they'd even happened to him.
